


Doll

by ms_qualia



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dreamsharing, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Trippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-05-29 09:23:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 45,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6369121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_qualia/pseuds/ms_qualia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey enters a tainted cave on Ach-To to complete her Jedi training.  She has visions of Kylo Ren.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Rey fell out of unconsciousness, prone, panting and disoriented.  She moved her arms and found them pinned behind her, which set her immediately into a thrashing, leg-kicking panic.  Her heel clipped a wall, and it hurt.  Her legs were not bound.

The last thing she remembered was the feeling of being pinned in place, unable to even collapse.  She remembered the bright red weapon, its heat, and the faint smell of ozone.  She remembered his mask so close to her left eye it took up her whole vision.

More came back, less vivid.  She remembered Luke on the promontory, taking the saber.  She remembered sleeping under the stars.  She remembered putting something together— what was it?  It had seemed important.  It was like a dream she was only recalling after the sun was high. It fled from her when she tried to bring it into focus.

She remembered the mouth of a cave, Luke’s hand on the small of her back.

She had hesitated and he had pushed.

And then she came to and was pinned in place again, with that man’s hand hovering next to her face. remembered the distinctive way he breathed.  The faint rattle.  That was vivid.  That was immediate.

His breathing had been slow.  As she recalled the rhythm, unconsciously, she matched it.  Her heart slowed.  She curled her legs under her and tried to use them to push up, but without the use of her arms she felt off balance.  She scooted to the wall, pressed her shoulder against it, and kicked again.  She managed to slide up the wall into a seated position.

She looked around, panting.  The room was very dark.  Dim lights were inset at the top of each wall, but they only illuminated the geometric pattern of the wall and not the inky center of the room.  There was a platform, a podium perhaps, and a chair, and something else hard to make out next to it.  A rounded shape.  She squinted upward at the ceiling.  Many steel slats pointed toward the center of it, in front of some kind of backdrop.  Half half of it was paper-white and luminous, and the other half black.  She focused on the dark half.

She made out little flecks of light in the dark.

It was a viewport, she realized.  The white was—

“ _No_ ,” she said.

She heard a crackling, shuddering breath.  She flinched.  Her body would not obey her.  She started sliding down the wall and kicking simultaneously, spastically, as the impulses to look and to flee fought a pitched battle down her spine.

Flight, not being an option, lost.

She turned her head away and looked around the room, from the corners of her eyes.

He was knelt, not far from her, perhaps two arm-widths from her.  His mask was on.  There was a podium to the right of him, triangular.  Something was on it.

“How am I here?” she said.

He tilted his head.

“You’re my guest,” he said.

He’d said that before.  She bore his teeth at him.

“I should have killed you.”

“Yes.  Knowing nothing about me,” he said.  It was not a question.

“I know enough.  Monster.”

He hooked his gloved fingers at a spot near his jaw.  There was a faint whir.  As he pulled the mask off he stood, looming over her.

She had seen this before.  She had done this before.  She was still terrified, but the repetition allowed her a small amount of merciful detachment.

He had a wide, full mouth and a long nose.  From the curl of his lip and the way he tightened his eyes, he knew she would find him shocking. His stiff, thick collar ran up his neck and did not permit him to incline his head downwards. The same fabric wrapped around his arms, too tight.  His skin tingled and ached as it strained against the fabric.

Kylo Ren felt as if he were choked, always.  Rey could feel it.

He glanced to his side as if expecting a place to set his helmet.  He frowned.  He tucked the mask under his arm.

“You know what I’ve come for.”

She laughed.  “You have no idea, do you?  You’ve already failed.  I’ve already won.”

He narrowed his eyes.  “ _You’ve_ won?”

Rey tightened her lips and looked away.  From the corner of her eye, she saw his body language change, subtly.  He was trying a different tack.  He knelt, placed the mask on the ground, leaned on it.  Rey looked at him.  His eyelashes flicked when she met his gaze.  He was surprised she would look at him.

“Is it true?” he said.   He dropped his voice, pulled out a sibilant, breathy hiss. “You’re just a scavenger?”

“No.”

She pushed herself up with her legs.  He glanced up and down her body.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she said.

“What?”

“You’re waiting for me to kick you.”

“You’re no threat to me.”

“Maybe.  You’d just love me to try.”

He tilted his head and squinted at her.  He leaned forward, closer to her.  She pulled her knee back and kicked, as hard as she could.  He caught her heel put it on the floor, and pressed down on her shins with his gloved hands, pinning them.  His face was serene; he looked proud of himself.  She tightened her lips in frustration, at how easy it was for him.  She looked up at the podium, at the thing on it.   She focused her frustration on it.

His eyes widened.  He looked behind him as the polished stone podium tipped, then fell.  He threw his arm out to catch the object on top of it in mid-air.  As he did, Rey pulled her leg free and kicked again, at his throat, where the fabric felt the tightest. 

She hit him, hard, and he made a satisfying throaty gurgle.

Rey pulled her legs out under him, pressed her back against the wall to try to stand, trying to make her body obey her more quickly.  The harder she pushed, the more her body resisted her.  It was like when Luke had her run through chest-deep water.

Ren’s head snapped up to look at her, eyes wide with pain and something else.  He willed himself to crouch and tackle her, and she cried out as she landed on her shoulder.  She pulled against her cuffs.  She was pinned across her belly by his torso, heavy.  As he gained his breath, she lost hers.  She reared up on her shoulders and dropped herself in frustration and defiance.  She nearly banged her head against the floor.

“You....” he said.

“You let me go.”  She struggled under him, but he was too heavy.  Her fabric rubbed against her skin on her hip.  It stung.

“Don’t fight it.  You know you can’t.”

Rey squinted at the object on the floor.  It was the same size as his helmet.  She lifted it.  She waited for him to divide his attention, to give her an opportunity to push him off of her and run.

He did not take the bait, but she felt his fear.  She hurled it against the floor.  There was a light tinkling of metal as parts of it broke off and skittered and bounced across the stone floor.

“I’ll smash it,” she said.

His breathing became more labored.

“You haven’t just seen the map.  You’ve seen _Luke_ ,” he said.

She lifted the twisted object again.

“This was your grandfather’s, right?”  She dropped it again onto the stone floor.  Little chunks of stone flew past Rey’s face.  “I’ve held his lightsaber.”

He paused.  He was considering if she was lying, she knew.  She did not know how she knew.  It was a fact, apparent as the shape of the room, or the color of the paper-white Starkiller high in the viewport above.

He carefully slid his body across hers.  He slid his arm under her so he could hold her tight against him, and stood them both up, lifting her.  She tried lurching her head forward to break his nose, but her timing was off.  She only hit her forehead against his chest.

“Where is Luke?” Ren said, his voice raspy from when she’d hit him.

Rey, without meaning to, recalled sitting in the Falcon, her fingers playing across the entry pad as she calculated the coordinates for the jump.  She recalled how the readout had looked.  But the numbers bent and danced like ribbons of smoke rising from the campfire Luke had built her first night on Ach-to; seemingly solid, but impossible to grasp.

“Where is Luke?” repeated Ren.

She blinked.  He probed her head, passing like a tongue over the surface of her mind.  Her breath shook.  It took all she had to pull back from hyperventilating, she exhaled in spastic little sighs.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said.  “I feel it too.”

Something about it wasn’t right.  Her memory, the parts of it which might orient her to where she was, had been torn out.  Everything else worked.   Her time on Jakku.  Meeting Finn.

She didn’t know where Luke was, she realized.  It was missing and where it had been there was a hole. She couldn’t give it to him.

His gloves squeaked as they wrapped around one of her hair knots.  He lowered his hand down on her back and pulled back on the knot, firmly.  She snorted.  Her breath ran across his chin.  His lips parted.

“That weapon is mine, Rey.  Does Luke have it?  Where is it?”

She remembered Luke taking the saber.  Ren saw it too and blinked.

“What are you here for?” he said.  It was an entirely new tone, less pleasant, less commanding, less rehearsed.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said.

“You’re here for a reason.”

“ _You_ kidnapped _me_.”

Ren looked around the room as she had when she’d first woken.  He looked up.  Rey followed his gaze.  He was not looking at the stars and the firmament between them.  He looked at the great white expanse Starkiller base, looming large in the viewport above.

“You will release me,” he said.

She strained against his grip.  “You’re crazy,” she said.  His head snapped down.  He bore his teeth at her.

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” he said.  “ _I_ am not the one who brought me here.  I am not a doll.  I am not for you to dress up and use on _your_  journey of self-discovery while you fiddle with yourself.  You’re disgusting.”

He let her go, pushed her away.  She staggered backward, almost tripping over the toppled podium.  She looked at him.  He made no move to catch her.

She backed up toward the door, toward the panel next to it.  He only watched her.  She hit the button with her forehead.  It slid open.  She looked through it.

It was the same room, mirrored exactly, without her in it.  Kylo Ren stared at her through the door.  She looked behind her.  Kylo Ren stared at her behind her.   She stepped through the door.  It closed behind her.

“Where am I?” said Rey.

“You’re completing your training,” spat Kylo Ren.

Rey thought, frantically.

“Where are you?” she said.

Ren tilted his head back.  His eyes moved.

“You severed all the tendons in my arm.  Cauterized them.  It’s useless now.  I’m… having it—“ he passed his teeth over his upper lip.  He removed his glove and flexed his hand.  “It feels very real.  You almost had me fooled, Jedi.”

“Why would you be a part of my training?”

He laughed, a short staccato, hollow laugh.

“I am immune to the light.  This will not tempt me.”

“Tell me what is going on.”

Ren bent and picked up Vader’s helmet.  Rey had heard of Vader.  Heard stories.  She had not, however, seen a picture.  She just knew he wore all black.

But she knew it was Vader’s helmet.  It was just a fact she knew.  She knew the saber she had handed Luke was Vader’s.  Ren looked over at her, at her look of horror.

“This isn’t real,” she said.

Ren nodded.  He dropped Vader’s helmet onto the chair.

“This place is personal to me, Jedi.  You shouldn’t have come here.”

“I didn’t want this.  I don’t know what this means.”

He advanced on her, openly furious, barely restrained.  His fists clenched.

“You reject my offer.  You meet my mother, my father, my uncle.  You insinuate yourself into their lives.   _My_ life.  So easily.  You worm my way into my dreams.  You the gall to bring me here to participate in your training, in an ideology _I_ find detestable.”

Rey pressed herself against the door.  He stood over her.  He held his hand out as if to choke her, as if to freeze her in place.  He did not.

“And now, _you_ want _me_ to tell _you_ what is going on?” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

His hand touched her throat.  It rested against it.  His fingers twitched.  They did not tighten.  He blinked away angry tears.

He bent, suddenly, and his mouth was on hers.  She felt his desperation, his loneliness.  His mouth was soft.  She leaned up into him, and in shock, he pulled away.  His eyes darted from her mouth to each of her eyes.  He looked over to the door panel.

“Stay away from me, Jedi.  When the time comes, stay out of my way.”

Something bubbled up in him, something he couldn’t hide.  He tried, and she still felt it.

“You don’t want to kill me,” she said, shocked.

He hit the panel with his palm as hard as he could.  The door slid open behind her, and he shoved her through into the void beyond.

—

Rey fell for a long time and landed.

She was on the shore, near the mouth of the cave Luke had pushed her into.  It was night.  The water lapped against the rocks.  She was standing.  Her arms were not bound.  She remembered she had walked out of the cave on her own power, although her mind had been elsewhere.

She had been hallucinating.

She looked around, for Luke, and spotted him down the shoreline, seated, legs crossed, looking up at Ach-To’s bronze-colored moon.  She walked over the rocks, her ankles twisting this way and that on the uneven surface.

“What was that?” she said.

“Killing him won’t bring Han back,” said Luke.

Rey pulled her head back.  Her cheeks flushed.  “Th-that’s—“

Luke sighed.  “You still have a lot to learn.”

He stood, unfolding his knees with arthritic difficulty.

“Was that really him?” she said.

Luke brushed his cloak off and found his walking stick among the rocks.  He started on the path up to his cabin.

“He’d kill you if he found you,” said Rey.

Luke waved his hand behind his head at her.

“Go to bed, Rey,” he said. “We’ll start again in the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a challenge by @oldadastra on Tumblr to try and fit all of the Kylo Ren doll's lines into one one-shot.
> 
> I failed.


	2. Chapter 2

Rey found her cot, still set up on the flattest stretch of rock she could find.  Luke had left her a bowl of something.  She was not hungry, but it was food, and it always felt wrong to turn it down.  She ate it absently and watched the ocean lap up on the rocks.

She opened up her pack.  It had the few belongings she had left: a change of clothes and gifts from her new friends.  A change of clothes and a book from Leia, a bone good-luck charm from Chewy.

And now her own lightsaber.  She had finished it the day before she went into the cave.  She’d spent days carrying the crystal in a little pocket by her heart while she trained, and she felt naked when she left it behind.  Luke had told her she didn’t need it.  It felt almost as bad when she'd left Finn behind to go train.

She tucked it back in place and looked back out over the water.

It was still fascinating to see that much water in one place.  Luke had told her not to drink from it.  He had a still to get the water clean up in his little hut.  He’d offered to let her sleep in there, but it felt weird to make him sleep outdoors or to share the little space with him.  This felt like the least awkward option.

She didn’t mistrust him exactly, not more than anyone else.  The idea of sleeping where someone else might be disturbed her.  They could do anything.  The felled AT-AT was, if nothing else, private and hers.  She could lock the hatch and disappear.  She’d never let anyone else inside it.

Rey put the day out of her head and devoured her food before lying down.  She was not sure when she fell asleep.  She may have dreamed of the ocean, or she may have been staring at it from her cot.

She dreamed.

—  
Rey sat up in a shiny white room.  There was a plastic mask over her face.  She reached for it to pull it off, and startled.

Her upper arm ached when she moved it, bone-deep, indescribably unsettling.  In the way heat transformed the day into something sick and indescribable in the desert in the dry season just after noon, this pain was different.  It nearly pushed out her second observation: her fingers were metal.  She felt a chill on her chest and looked down.

It was not her chest.  It was broad and bare above the ribs.   A man’s.  The waist was bound and ached, although less than the arm.  She moved her left hand— still human— to it.  There was a tube stuck in that arm, attached to a needle, like she’d seen with Finn.  Rey found it creepy.  She pulled it out.  It started bleeding.  Without thinking, she wrapped the metal fingers around her arm to stop the bleeding and grunted as flexing the arm upset the upper arm bones.

The voice that came out was a strange, deep sound.

There was a rolling table nearby and a pencil and notepad on it.  She reached for it.  With her left hand, she scrawled, in shaky block letters:

“Is this real?”

She didn’t seem to be able to stop the bleeding.  It flowed out of the arm in a steady trickle.  It spread down the sheets and down onto the floor like a river.  She gripped harder to no avail.  The heavy fluid spread across the floor and found the walls, found the air-tight door frame.  It crept upward, thick as syrup, shiny, and nearly black.  It found the edge of the mattress and crept over it, toward her.

It occurred to her she might drown in it.  She felt fine.

The med bay door opened, and the surface of the fluid lurched.

She woke up.

—

Rey sat up.  She pressed her face into her palms and sucked her breath in.  The sun barely peeked over the shallow waves, its light skipping over the peaks and valleys of the water.

She had sweat through her clothes.  She rubbed her arms to be sure they were still there before standing shakily.  She grabbed her empty bowl and spoon from off the ground to bring back with her.

Luke’s cabin was a little ways up the stone path.  It was built partially into the hill.  It had no door or windows, just mossy rounded holes in the stacked stone lean-to structure.  She stood outside the door and coughed.

“Come in,” he said.

She hesitated in front of the entrance.  She stepped through.  She almost expected to find herself somewhere else.  Instead, the kettle was on for tea, and Luke washed his face in a basin.  Rey tossed her dinner dish and spoon into the wash bucket near the door.

“Hungry?” he said.

“I had a bad dream,” she said.

She sat on the edge of his cot.  He’d pulled the dining table over to it when she first arrived so they could both eat at it.  He only had one chair.

Luke wasn’t a talker, and neither was Rey, really.  She cleared her throat.

“Do you have bad dreams?” she said.

“I hardly dream anymore,” he said.  “Can’t seem to sleep more than five hours at a time.”

“What was that cave?” she said.

He lifted the kettle and poured the water over a gritty grain which they’d eaten for most meals.

“It’s a place that was tainted by an unspeakable act a long time ago,” he said.

“Have you been in it?” she said.

“Not that one.  A similar one.  You can’t really say you’re a Jedi, a practitioner of the Light Side of the Force, if you haven’t turned away from the Dark Side.  You have to know what you’re rejecting, you know?”

Luke gave her a tight smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.  He carried the bowls of thickening porridge over to the table.

“I— you don’t think—“

“Relax,” he said.  “I didn’t do so hot my first time either.  We’ll try again.”

“Did you see anyone when you did it?”

“Yeah,” he said.  He picked up his cup.  

“Did he see you?”

Luke drank and frowned.  He pressed his lips together as he swallowed.

“I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  I mean, I can’t rule it out, now that I think about it.  He never, uh, mentioned it to me.”

“You talked later, though?”

Luke nodded.  “Once in a while, when I needed him.  Truth be told, a few years after the Force… it kind of waned, for about twenty years there.  Thinned out.  I used to see the past, the future.  Used to feel it in my bones, but it slowly went to sleep.  I stopped seeing him as much as I used to.”

“Who was it?”

“My dad.  I mean, I see other people, too.  Not him so often, just once in a while, catch a glimpse of him.  If you know somebody and they died and they were strong in the Force, you’ll see ‘em when you need them.  Don’t know if that’s true anymore.”

“I— I saw Kylo Ren.”

Luke frowned.  “Inside the cave or out?”

“In the cave.  I think I dreamed I was him last night.”

“How is he?”

Rey scoffed.

“It was just a dream,” she said.

“Are you angry with him?”

The corners of Rey’s mouth twitched.  She sensed she only had the wrong answer.

“Yes,” she said.   It felt like a lie.  Anger did not begin to describe it.  She shoved a spoonful of gruel into her mouth.

Luke held up his thumb and forefinger in front of his eyes.  “I came this close to killing someone once,” he said.  “I mean, not killing.  I guess I’ve killed a few people.  I mean, knowing who he was, knowing his name, looking for him, and cutting him in half, and cutting the pieces in half until all that was left was pieces.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“He sacrificed himself so I wouldn’t do it.  Anyway, I am a Jedi. Kept myself to a regimen you know?  But I did everything I wasn’t supposed to do and did OK, and when I tried doing the right thing after, things went worse.  I’m not sure I should be teaching anyone.”

“I need you,” she said.

“What do you hope to accomplish once you’re trained?”

“I’m going to stop him,” she said.

“How?”

“Does it matter?”

“We don’t have the luxury of not mattering.  We act out the cosmos.  If you invite the Dark into your mind to help you defeat Kylo Ren, you don’t get to uninvite it when it’s time to lay your head down at night.”

Rey put her plate down on the table a little too hard.

“I’ll be fine,” she said.  “I’ll do whatever I have to.”

“I am concerned.”

“Then why are you helping me?”

“It was my responsibility to stop him, and I didn’t.  I’m not sure it’s my place to stand in your way however you choose to stop him.  But I feel like it’s my job to make sure you don’t end up like he did.”

“I am nothing like that man.”

Luke lifted his cup to his lips.

“I can’t tell you otherwise?” he said.

“Absolutely not.”

Luke nodded.  “All right.  Training for today:  Pick up a rock and do laps.”

Rey stared at him.

“A rock?”

“Yeah.”

“How big?”

“Doesn’t matter.  Good sized.”

“Anything I should be doing?  How long?”

“You’ll figure it out.  I’ll check on you,” he said.

Rey rubbed her nose.  “What about my lightsaber?”

“What about it?”

“Do you plan on teaching me to use it?”

“You beat Ben.  You don’t need me to teach you how to handle a lightsaber.”

“Ben?”

Luke winced.

“Who’s Ben?” said Rey.

Luke waved his finger at the door irritably.  “Go on your run.   Be back for lunch.”

—

Rey went on her run, and ran until she was tired.  She went on one the next morning.  She chose a smoother rock that time. She ran until her hands were raw and her ankles hurt.  Salt had started crusting on the outside of her clothes, and Luke gave her a wash bucket and soap to wash them and excused her.  On the third day, she showed up with her lightsaber.  He saw it on her hip.

“Go on a run,” he said as they finished breakfast.

“Really?” she said.

“Really,” he said.

“Am I learning what I need to?”

“I sure hope so,” said Luke earnestly.

Rey walked out of Luke’s lean-to.  She stormed to the opposite side of the island, threw her head back, and bellowed until her lungs were empty.  It echoed off the steep cliffs of the island.

And then there was a faint, quiet echo of a familiar voice.  She turned her head toward it.  It was in the direction of the seaside cave, a few minute’s walk north.

She mustered up her strength to yell again.  She faced north and yelled again, and it called back to her.

It was his voice.  She felt her blood rush to her neck.  She pawed at her satchel, dug under the clothes in it.  Chewy’s talisman clattered down onto the rocks.  She pulled her saber, clipped it to her belt, and ran toward the cave.

Its mouth was the black of the firmament on which the universe was built, and it welcomed her.

—

Kylo Ren hated Jakku with everything he was.  He hated what it represented.  He hated the slimy merchant which had pointed him to the ruined AT-AT.  He hated how his cloak was ill-adapted to its heat, and how he had to check the protective covering of his new arm for grit.  The sharp sand crept under his sleeves, into his collar.

But he needed to understand something.

The troopers accompanying him opened the hatch on the carcass of a former wonder of the Empire.  AT-ATs had once been a marvel of engineering, a testament to the superiority of the Empire.  Laid low by usurpers.

He felt something when they pulled the hatch open; a presence. The second trooper, the one not on the hatch pulled his blaster.  He felt nothing, he was deaf to the ebb and flow of energy around him.  Standard procedure was to clear the enclosure before Kylo Ren stepped in.  The trooper was merely doing as he knew to do.

“No need.”

“Sir?”

“Wait here.”

Kylo Ren stooped and climbed through the hole in the belly of the felled beast, unsure of what he’d find.

—

Rey woke up in her bed.  Her real bed in the AT-AT.  It was unbearably hot, the air stagnant.  It had to be midday on Jakku, and she was in a metal box.  Sweat poured off of her.  She sat up.

Kylo Ren had his helmet tucked under his arm.  He had shed his surcoat and armguard.  His hair was pasted to his face with sweat.  She could see his chest through his mesh undershirt.  His metal arm glinted in the faint light.  He held his hand up to her wall.  He ran his finger over one of the marks as if making it himself.  His lips were parted.

“Are you awake, Jedi?” he said. He glanced over at her.   She ground her teeth at him.

“I concede the answer is not straightforward,” he said.  He turned toward her.  The great angry wound on his face was still healing.  A square of gauze was taped to the inside of his remaining arm.

“I seem to have woken up disoriented from my surgery and pulled out my IV,” he said.  “I made a mess.”

“I don’t know what that has to do with me,” she said.

He pulled something folded from a pocket on his chest, over his heart.  He sneered when he found it damp, and carefully unfolded it.

“This is not my handwriting,” he said. “‘Is this real?’  That is not a question I ask.  The Force shows me things.  'Real' is not a valid framework.”

“You were probably out of your mind.  My sympathies.”

“How is your training going?”

Rey’s face was numb she was so angry.  She clutched the lightsaber at her side.  He probably noticed, but he didn’t seem to care.  She looked for his weapon.

He noticed.  He laughed.

“I am unarmed,” he said.  He flexed the fingers of his prosthetic.  He saw the discomfort on her face and grinned.  The wounded side of his face slumped a little.

Rey felt sick.

He looked around the room.

“Why are you here?” she said.

“Just confirming something.  It’s hard to know what’s real.  I’m sure you understand.”

He put down his mask to pick up the little Rebel pilot doll she’d made.  Rey stumbled to her feet.

“Put that down.”

He dropped it, he rubbed his fingers together as if it were dirty and kept looking.  Rey kept her distance from him.

“What are you doing?”

“ _You._  I know you,” he said.  “You have made yourself a doll.  And you….” he found a small stack of books, ran his hand along their spines, and pulled exactly the one he was looking for out.

“— _you_ kept a journal.  You _would_ keep one.”  

Rey flicked the switch on her lightsaber.  The small compartment filled with a sickly yellow light.

“Put it down,” she snarled.

He turned toward her.  He tilted his head back and forth, knit his eyebrows together, and otherwise ignored her.  He opened it to the middle and laid the note he’d brought.  He compared the two.

“You’re right-handed?” he said.  He glanced up at her, at the way she held her saber.  She gripped it harder.  He nodded to himself and glanced down again.  He ran his fingers across the page.

“Did you use my left hand for this?” he asked.

“Why do you care?”

But she recalled the pencil in her hand when he asked.  He nodded, as if she had answered him.

“It has occurred to me, Jedi, that if your training were going well, you would not insist on visiting.”

“I don’t want to be here.”

“Did Luke shove you in this time?  Are you asleep?”

The sweat on Rey’s upper lip itched.  She sniffed and shifted from foot to foot.  She felt the fine hairs on her temple start to stick to her face.

“If you cannot stay away, despite how unwelcome I have made you, I assume you need me. Since I do not want to kill you, I’ve decided to make myself at your service.  You have accepted my offer whether you admit it to yourself or not.  I find that _immensely_ pleasing, so I will put up with _this,”_ he waved his free hand around to indicate the room _, “_ for now.”

He closed the note in the book.  He stooped and picked the doll he’d dropped.

“I will need a memento,” he said. “Which would you rather I have, the doll or the book?”

She looked from hand to hand.  The doll was in his flesh-hand, the book in the metal.  His arms were spread open.  He was unarmed.  She could see the muscles in his stomach move.  She could strike then, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“If you kill me now, I’ll have taught you everything I know.  I’d prefer the longer path, myself,” he said pleasantly.  “Now tell me, which?”

Rey hit the switch on her lightsaber again.  She rubbed the sweat out of her eyes.

“The doll,” she said.

He smiled.  He tucked the book under his arm, strode over to her, and grasped her free hand.  She tried to jerk away.  He pressed the doll into her left hand.  She thought of switching on the saber in her right and ending it.

She hated that she could not do it.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Something to remember me by,” he said.  He closed her fingers around it, grabbed her fist, and pulled her to the entrance of her home.  He opened the door.  The void was outside.

“I’m not done yet,” she said.

“I am,” he replied.  “For today, at least.  Come back when you need me.”

He pushed.

—

Rey woke up quickly and knew exactly where she was.  She was at the mouth of the tainted cave on Ach-To.  It was still daylight out.  The sun was high.  She beat her fists against the rocks and yelled.  She listened for Kylo Ren’s voice to echo back out of the cave and did not hear it.

The fingers of both hands began to hurt.  She looked at them.  She’d bloodied her knuckles.  She had her lightsaber in her right hand and her doll in her left.

It was real.


	3. Chapter 3

Rey stuffed the doll and saber into her satchel and walked to Luke’s cabin.  He was not there.  She was late and his bowl was already empty in the wash bucket.  Rey ate her bowl of mush by halves until she pushed around two spoonfuls while she stared out the window.  She flicked her fingernails against her thumb.

The light turned golden and Luke returned.  She seemed startled to see her.

“Maybe I should go,” said Rey.

Luke walked to his bed.  He sat heavily on it and stretched his aching knees.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Rey shrugged.

“I can’t allow it,” he said.

Rey swore she misheard.  “Beg pardon?”

“You won’t be leaving.”

Rey tilted her head forward and furrowed her brow in shock.  “I’m not getting anything from this.”

“I see that.  Believe me, I do.  I feel your rage.  It radiates off of you.  That’s why you can’t leave.”

Rey stood so fast her chair nearly toppled over.  “You plan to keep me here?”

Luke squinted, almost apologetic.  “Look, I don’t have a transceiver.  I can’t call anyone anyway.  But I know Chewy, and I know Leia.  If they show up, they’re gonna wanna talk with me before leaving.  They'll listen to me.  While you feel the way you do, until you get your feelings in check, there’s a huge chance you’ll do something you can’t take back.  That’s going to have consequences bigger than you can imagine.”

Rey opened and closed her mouth several times before she found words.

“So _help_ me," she said.

“I can’t just let you go and hope something outside of you turns you toward the light.”

“It worked out for you.”

Luke looked around his cabin.  “Is this what things working out look like to you?”

“You’ve tried teaching all of three months, and you’re giving up?”

“You aren’t my first Padawan.”

Rey blinked.  In an instant, she knew who his first was.  Her lips were numb. She stood, walked to the cupboard, and took a little clay mug from the shelf, then walked to the tall, cylindrical still Luke had built into the corner of the cabin.  He put a bucket full of sea water every morning and by evening they had clean water.  She twisted a knob and water trickled out for her.  She drank it.  Some of it dribbled down her chin.  She gasped for air.

“A-anything else I should know?” she said.  “Since I’m going to be spending so much time with you.”

“Darth Vader was my father.”

“You’re Kylo Ren’s father?”

“What?  No.  Leia is his ma.  She’s my sister.”

Leia had called Han her husband.  Rey felt dizzy.  She lowered herself to the ground and leaned against the still.  It was hot.  She didn't care.  The pain felt right, somehow.  There was symmetry.

“I know how you feel,” said Luke.

“I don’t think you do.”

“Well, you’re taking it better than I did.  Are we still on speaking terms?”

Rey took another sip.  “It doesn't say good things about you if I'm talking to you.”  Rey thought of Kylo Ren, and closed her eyes until she could put him out of her thoughts.  She thought of a different example.  "I stayed on speaking terms with Unkar Plutt."

“I’m afraid to ask who that is.”

Rey snorted.  She waited until her heart slowed down before saying anything.

“How do you expect me to stop Kylo Ren from here?”

Luke squinted out the window at the ocean.  The sun was low, and the waves were a shifting sunlight and gray-green quilt.

“Did you go back to the cave today?” he asked.

Rey stood and walked out.  She did not return for supper.

She’d rather be hungry.

—

Kylo Ren spent another day on Jakku combing through the ruins Rey had touched accompanied by the oily Unkar Plutt.  His species had started in the depths of some distant sea and should have stayed there, in Kylo Ren’s opinion.  He was a blob, a minor petty tyrant of nowhere.  Not only did he know it, he was proud.  He barked at old women.  He terrorized them.  He wanted Ren to notice.  He took pleasure in Ren's disgust.

Ren felt there was a lesson there if he were to meditate on it.  It was a nightmare he could contemplate on while he completed his training.

The next stop in his shuttle would be to the Finalizer, and Hux would from there deliver him to Snoke.  Hux had only permitted this detour because he was sure whatever fruit Jakku would bear would not be adequate.  Kylo Ren would face additional wrath for not coming when called.

He was not ready to complete his training.  Not yet.  He had to take the long view.  Snoke was wise, but he could not feel the Force in Ren's life the way Ren could, and the girl's interest in being trained was a new development.  Ren, if he succeeded, could make Snoke understand.  Success forgives all.

Ren's shuttle had a small private cabin and two coffin-sized rooms for accompanying stormtroopers.  They sometimes doubled up on long journeys, sleeping like tinned fish or lovers.  He did not have to put up with that sort of thing.  Nobody touched him when he slept.

He stripped to his underclothes.  He had procured waxed paper from the junkyard blob boss and covered Rey's journal with it so it would not get soiled as her note had.  He pulled it out and considered opening it, but the extra layer felt prohibitive.  He could not simply flip it open and scan it.  It was a choice he'd have to make.  He would have to pull its outer layers off, press the pads of his fingers on the insides of its covers, and spread it wide.  It would be a deliberate invasion.

He put it back into its pocket.  It would have to wait for when he could take his time.

He climbed into his bunk.

Kylo Ren no longer wished for dreamless sleep.  He stopped wishing for pleasant ones after he’d actually met that girl.  He hoped for nightmares.  He did not get them.

—

Rey stayed up as long as possible.  She tried reading the book Leia gave her, a beautiful gilt and rich blue leather-bound book with the long floral lines of Naboo decorating its spine.   

Its contents were dense and almost nonsensical.  Lots of sons of sons and, at least, one Son of a Sun.  Very few daughters.  Some vague poetry about light and dark.

A long stretch seemed to be a dry account of who died in the Clone Wars.  There were wars upon wars upon wars stretching back far before Rey was born.  Rey found only one wedding mentioned:  An Anakin Skywalker to Padme Amidala.

After that the book was handwritten.  _Born to them, Luke Skywalker, last Jedi of his generation and Leia, called Leia Organa.  Born to Leia and Han Solo, Ben, the sole Jedi of his generation_

And then, in a shakier hand.  _known after his fall as Kylo Ren,_

Rey searched her pack for a pencil.  She found one.

 _the father-killer._   Rey added.

It was tough to match the style of the book, but it didn’t matter so much.  The style was stuffy anyway.  What mattered was the next person to have it would know.

As the light faded, so did her ability to make out words on a page.  It was do something to distract herself or sleep, and she was too hungry to do much.

She liked to keep the saber near her, as near as she could.  She didn’t think it was safe to put it under her pillow, or she would.  Instead, in its place, she took the doll out of her pack and put it under her pillow.  It’d been hers since before Kylo Ren slid his fingers over it, and nothing he could do could make it anything but hers.  It felt good to have something that was hers.  He wouldn’t take it from her.

She closed her eyes and waited for sleep to take her.

—

Her eyes opened in the dark.  She was not on her cot.   Her forehead was pressed against something firm and warm.  Her arm was pinned under it.  She pulled at it and heard a hiss of breath.  She stiffened.  Her arm was free as he stretched and she scrambled off the bed.  The man fumbled in the dark for the light switch.  He smacked the lamp a few times until the found the switch.  The light hurt Rey’s eyes, and she blinked.

He pushed the hair out of his eyes.  It was Ren, or Ren’s body.  He was not nearly tense enough.  He didn’t have the scar.  He had a light beard.

“Are you all right?” he said.

Rey looked down.  She was wearing a very thin, fine knit tunic that barely covered her bottom and showed the outlines of her nipples.  They were in a room with very large viewports out to the stars, in orbit above a blue-green planet.  The room was sparsely decorated, just a bed, a chest of dressers, a nightstand and lamp, and a leather-bound chest in the corner of the room.

That chest, the one from Maz’s castle.

She dove on it, threw it open, and pawed around inside, pushing aside countless little trinkets she couldn’t give a damn about.

It wasn’t there.  The saber was missing.

“Rey?” he said.  She suddenly realized her back was to him and turned around, still crouched.  He was sat up, shirtless, and alarmed.

“Is this your dream or mine?” she said.  He frowned like he didn’t know what she was talking about.  Her lip shook.  She bunched her tunic in her fists and pulled down on it.  She was not wearing underwear.  “Whose sick idea was this?”

He motioned to her.

“Come back to bed,” he said.

Rey burst into tears.  He threw the covers off of him and walked wobbly over to her.  He crouched down on his heels.  He tentatively tried to touch her.  She smacked his hand away.

“Hey,” he said.

“Don’t touch me.”

“What is this about?”

“Luke won’t let me leave,” she said.

“My uncle?”

She nodded.

“He didn’t have any intention of training me.  He just wants to use me to get to you.”

He rocked back on his heels and crossed his legs, careful not to catch her with his heel.  Rey wiped her face with her tunic and looked up at him.

He was confused but very interested.

“Is this a thing that has happened, could have happened, or will happen?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Is the Force telling you something in your dreams?”

“I’m dreaming now.”

His eyes surveyed the ceiling as he thought.

“Do you know who I am?” he said.

Rey nodded.

“What am I called?”

“Kylo Ren.”

His eyebrows rose.  “Are you still Rey?”

She nodded.

“All right.  Listen, the Force will show you things that come to pass, and some which never came to pass.  This might be your future or your past.”

Rey looked at his face and arm.  They were unmarred.  His skin was lovely, she noticed.  It had this sheen to it and was pale in contrast to his dark hair and eyelashes.  He was heavily freckled.  His eyes were a very light golden brown.  He was striking.  He looked kind.  He held his shoulders together, curved his upper back like he was apologizing for being so large.

She shook her head emphatically.  

“This isn’t my life,” she said.

He winced.

“All right.  Never,” he said.  He rubbed his nose and continued.  “It’s frightening, and it can be very hard to deal with, but it’s showing you what you need.  It is a reflection of yourself, which is why you need to work very hard on yourself.  Do you understand?”

Rey nodded.

“Why didn’t Luke tell me this?” she said.  The question came from deeper in her than she meant it to and it started the tears back up again.  He, uncomfortable with her pain, lamely patted at her shoulders.

“What’s your name?” she said.

“Ben,” he said.

Rey saw something move behind him.  She glanced over his shoulder.

The wall around the viewport was no longer there.  She could see the planet and the stars.  The floor behind him slowly fell away.  He followed her gaze and swallowed.

“I guess it’s time to go,” he said.

“You have to go?”

“If I’m ‘never was,’ yes.  But I suppose I won’t… know about it,” he said.  He probed the corner of his mouth with his tongue while he thought.  The bed disappeared behind them.

“Listen, whatever you’re here for, could you do something for me?”

“M-maybe?”

He pressed his left hand against her face.  She felt something hard.  He was wearing a ring.  She looked down at her hands.  Her left ring finger had a plain pale band on it.

“Learn from this.  Please.”

The floor disappeared from under him, and he fell.

—

Kylo Ren woke up.  He pulled Rey’s journal out of his breast pocket and threw it across his cabin.  It was quite some time before he found it, checked it for damage, and put it back in his pocket where it belonged.

—

Rey sat up.  The Journal of the Whills was still open to where she’d turned it and left her mark on history.  She caught the name, Ben, on the page.  She reached for it and shut it.

Her stomach ached.  She could go a day without food.  Luke wouldn’t deny it to her, ever, but it would hurt him more than her to deny herself especially if she went easy for the day.

She cleared her throat.  She took a deep breath and screamed.  She listened to the reply.

She knew it was Kylo’s voice that echoed off the cliffs.  She wondered if it was also Ben’s.

She clipped her lightsaber to her belt.  After some consideration, the doll would go too on the day’s expedition to the void.  Unlike Finn, she could protect them.  She could stay with them, and they with her.  They could never get hurt.  She could never hurt them.

That was a nice thought.  Her hunger gave her a pleasant head-buzz.  Her friends were with her.  She had met Ben, who she almost liked and who had, at least, not _meant_ to leave as soon as she'd liked him.  Her life was really full.

Really.


	4. Chapter 4

The place where the void met the cave was an almost invisible sheet.  Rey could see it, barely, if she did not look directly at it.  If she looked at it from the corner of her vision, she could see a flickering seam where reality lensed under the strain of the evil once done there.

Rey had spent some time inside the cave, and like her lightsaber and her doll had begun to consider the void inside her friend.  It was not completely unlike a person  It was angry and alone.  It had things to tell her.  She listened to what the Force told her about it.

This is what she was told:  The void had not been there since the foundation of the universe.  The planet had only cooled a fraction of a second prior in the cosmic clock.  But whatever was there was at least as old as sentience.  It was not created by the evil done inside of the cave.  It had merely been welcomed there by it.

Now it welcomed Rey.  

She wondered if she’d see Ben again.

She crossed the threshold and was enveloped by her old friend.

—

All was black a while.  Just long enough for Rey to feel a prickle of uncertainty.  She took a step back and fell into a chair.  Out of the chair bloomed the rest of her surroundings, first the lights of the cockpit and then the view screen, and then the Jakku desert outside of it.

She was not familiar with the ship.  It was not one she had in her flight simulator at home.  However, from the position, behind the pilot and co-pilot, she was likely in the navigator’s chair.  The cockpit was huge for any ship, and new.  It didn’t have any signs of wear.  No loose threads on the leather seats.  The plastic switches on the dash would wear down with years of use, but now they were new, with crisp corners.

Rey wondered how many portions she’d get for a pristine section of dashboard like that.  If Unkar Plutt was in a fair mood, perhaps three dozen.

She peered out the side view port and saw Kylo Ren standing, helmet on, in the hot sun.  Four stormtroopers had their weapons trained on him.  One of them had a red arm-band.  He was tense.  He gesticulated to Ren with the weapon.

Ren reached to his side and pulled out his weapon.  The red-arm-band trooper motioned with his blaster toward the ground.  He was telling Ren to drop his weapon.

Ren stepped forward, threw his palm forward, and several things happened at once.  His lightsaber, in the other hand, unfurled.  The red arm-band trooper flew backward into two other troopers, knocking them into a ramshackle building a great distance away.

The fourth trooper fired and hit Ren square in the chest.  He staggered back a step, then sank to his knees.  He dropped his saber.  The sand around it started to turn black, and then to glow.

Rey screamed.  She willed herself to watch.  The trooper, cautiously, approached him.  Ren clutched his chest with his flesh hand.  His torso bowed in the effort to breathe.

The trooper took another step.

Ren threw his hand in front of him to pull his saber to him, and the trooper was in its path.  The trooper fell.

Ren stood, with difficulty.  The sand where the saber had been was black and shiny, and little shards of it had begun to pop off of its solid mass as it cooled.

He walked under the ship.  Rey went to the door of the cockpit and opened it.

Only the void beyond, just a black sheet of nothing out the door.  She didn’t have free reign of the ship, just that room.  She could hear steps on the gangplank, however.

“Hello?” she shouted.

The steps stopped for a moment.  She could hear him breathing heavy through the mask.

“Are you all right?” she tried.

She heard him undo and drop the mask, and heard the sound of the gangplank being pulled up.  She heard his labored footfall again and took a step back as he stepped into the cockpit.

“I’m fine,” he said.

The blaster bolt had gone through all the layers of his outer coat.

“How?” she said.

He cast his eyes toward the ceiling and removed his outer coat.  Just under it was a vest of thick rubbery material.  It was black.  The heat of the blast had warped the fabric in a patch the size of a fist.  The center of the blast had been eaten away, exposing a raw, charred, bloody patch of skin.

“I saw this coming.  I was prepared,” he said.

“But it went through,” she said.

“It’s blaster resistant, not blaster-proof.  This was the best possible outcome.”

“Why did they shoot you?”

“I have somewhere to go before I return.  They disagreed.”

He closed his mouth, firmed his jaw.  He did not tell her more.

“Do you have bacta onboard?” she said.

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“Of course.”

“Get it.”

Ren ignored her.  He stepped around her to the pilot’s seat and typed in automatic takeoff sequence, then hit the button.  Rey scrambled to her chair and buckled in.  Ren did the same and winced as the straps tightened across his chest.

The ship shuddered as it climbed through Jakku’s atmosphere.  They broke through its pale-blue edge and with a push of their aft engines they were in stable orbit.  Ren unbuckled and walked past Rey, out to cockpit door, presumably to the back of the ship.  Rey still could not see through the door into what was beyond.  It looked flat and black, like a pool of very thick liquid.  It didn’t reflect any light.

Ren was gone for a few minutes.  Rey unbuckled walked to the front viewport.  She leaned over the control panel, staring at Jakku from above.  She’d seen it before when she had left.  She’d spent all her life bound to the planet surface.  She’d spent very little time in space.  It was still a marvel.  She hoped it would stay that way forever.

Rey heard him and straightened up, unwilling to share something as dear as awe with him.  She faced the door.  He came back through the void.  It was almost as strange as seeing the planet from space.  It was strange to see every time as if he was rising up out of a dark body of water.

He had a bottle of bacta and a package of gauze.  Rey pointed at the navigator’s seat.  He dutifully sat.  He removed the blaster-resistant vest and unzipped the top of his mesh under-layer.  His suspenders which held his trousers up were in the way.  He shrugged them and his shirt off.   Some little mesh fibers had been burned into his skin, and he grunted as it peeled away from him, taking a skin with it.

Rey opened the bacta bottle and poured a little onto the gauze.   She knelt.  In front of him, between his legs to get better access.

She looked up at him.  He was staring at her, confused.  She blinked.

“What _are_ you doing?” he said.

“I….”

“You’re acting strangely.  Are you feeling like yourself?”

Rey swallowed.  Her hands started to shake.  She was, however, in the middle of something, and it felt less strange to continue than to follow her impulse to jump to her feet and run.  She reached out with the rag, up to his chest, and pressed it against the edges of his burn.   His breath hissed outward.  She could not tell if it was pain from the pressure or pleasure from the relief of the skin beginning to heal.

Using bacta was like using a rag and soap to wipe away layers of dirt off of a speeder.  Rey carefully worked in little circles.  Burnt black flesh fell away in flakes, and the bacta quickly restored the skin underneath.  Almost-new, paper thin at first, tiny blood vessels knitting themselves underneath.  The skin grew thicker, then shiny like an old scar.

She glanced up at him, at his face, at the deep scar there.

“Why didn’t you do bacta on your face?”

He wrapped his hands around her wrists and fingers.  His metal hand, around her wrist, was cold.

“I wasn’t sure I’d see you again,” he said.  “Although I had reason to believe I might.”

She tried to pull her hand away.  She couldn’t get it loose.  She was on her knees in front of him, her arm up, pinned against his chest.  She didn’t like how he was looking at her.

“W-what about your arm?” she said.

“What about it?”

“Bacta would have healed that.”

“You’re not a doctor.”

Rey stared at him.  He eventually averted his gaze.

“I am the master of the Knights of Ren because if they fight me, I will win.  It was three days in a bacta tank, then weeks of training to get it back the way it was.  With bacta and implants, less than a day.  Simple choice.”

“So it’s not my fault you look like that.”

“Feeling guilty?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He leaned forward.

“If you hate me, why are you playing nurse?”

“You’re injured.  I’m not a monster.  You wouldn’t understand.”

“Did you have a dream, Rey?”

Rey froze, caught.  “Let me go,” she said.

He did.  She fell backward onto her palms, panting.

“Have you dreamed about him before?”

“No,” she said quickly.

“That was _my_ dream,” he said.  Fury seeped into his voice at the edges.  He looked away for a moment and started again, placid once more.  “What’s Ben like, Rey?”

Ren slid out of his chair, onto his knees, between her ankles.  He slowly crawled toward her, up her body.

“Is he handsome?”

She held her chin up.  “ _He_ is.  Yes.”

“Were we pretending to play house with sweet, injured Ben?  Is that what possessed you?”

Rey did not answer.

Ren’s palms were on either side of Rey’s waist.  He rolled his head upwards and looked down at her through his eyelashes.

“I’m just an occasional passive witness to his life.  An unwilling voyeur.  He is a very nice man.  I don’t blame you.”

Rey did not answer.

“I saw how you looked at Ben when he touched you.  You soaked it up.  Luke could have you if he were just a little sweet.  If he touched you, you'd be his.  Has he?”

Rey did not answer.

“Ha.  No, then.  He should have seen he needed to embrace you to slake your thirst a little.  You are too easy.  You meet some sweet man with your enemy’s face and you fell for him.  Just like that.”

She bore her teeth.  “You’re nothing like him.”

His knees touched the back of her thighs.  He bent.  His nose brushed the side of hers.

“You’re not like his wife, either,” he said.

Rey jerked as if stabbed in the chest.  The fight poured out of her.  Ben, who never was, was with a Rey who never was.  Rey did not wonder what she was like.  She knew that Rey in her bones.

That Rey was happy.

Ren’s lips pressed against hers.  Rey closed her eyes.  Her shaky fingers found his ribs.  He lowered his hips to hers.  He ground forward.  Rey gasped and pulled away.  He held her gaze and rocked forward again.  Her face twitched with the intensity of trying to keep it still, but she could not keep her disgust off of her face. 

“Do you think _you_ could make me happy?”

“No,” he said.

He pressed his finger to her lips to hush her.  He watched interestedly how they changed shape under his finger.  He dragged his finger downward.  Impulsively, he leaned forward, kissed her lower teeth.

“I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time,” he said.  “I haven’t seen any other option.  We may as well enjoy ourselves.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“Yes.”  

His lips brushed against hers. His skin was warm.  He rocked his hips against hers again, and she felt a warmth between her legs.  He kissed her neck, found her pulse and pressed his tongue against it.  His fingers searched for and found the belt at her waist.   He yanked it, undoing it, and then threw it aside.  Her long wrap fell off her shoulders.  He found the lower edge of her tunic.  He sat up, and she sat up with him as he pulled it up and over her head.

He glanced down at her breasts, then up to her eyes.

He looked suddenly terrified.

Ren’s shoulders shone.  His skin was not as lovely as Ben’s.  Ben had lived an easier life.  The scar made him less handsome.  His anger made him handsome in a different way, more like Rey found machines pretty than she found her favorite childhood things pretty.

Looking at him, at his chest, at his face, made her ache.  And the way he looked at her, he must have also ached.  There was something inevitable about him.

Rey had scaled up the sides of broken star destroyers and looked down.  They were steep and tall as mountains at their peaks, and the drop-off was sheer.  Rey would stare off the edge.  She’d feel her guts writhe.  She did not want to die.  She longed to jump for its own sake, not for what would come after.  She’d stand near the edge, look down at the drop and the sand shimmering in the Jakku heat.  It called to her.  

It was inevitable.

He pulled her pants down and off of her, then crawled back up her body, pressing her down onto the cold hard floor.  The rough cloth of his pants rubbed across her bare skin.  She lifted her shaking hands and gingerly wrapped her arms around his shoulders.  He was also shaking, she realized.

“I’m not sure I want this,” he said.

Rey nodded.

“But we do?” she said.

“Yes,” he said.  He lifted his head.  He looked pained.  

“Don’t think of him,” he said.

Rey jerked out a shaky laugh.  “W-what should I think about?”

“Me.”

He was deadly serious, even earnest.  He studied her reaction.  She felt transparent, he looked through her and seemed to find, at last, something which satisfied him.  He shifted as he pulled his pants down.  Rey bit her lips between her teeth and trembled, waiting.  His cold metal knuckles brushed against her thighs as he wrapped his hand around himself.  He looked down, between their bodies.  Rey was not brave enough to look as well.

“Relax,” he rumbled.

She breathed in slowly.  He pressed into her, and inside of her, slowly.  Rey’s fingers tightened around his shoulders.  Her mouth opened in shock at the sensation.  Her legs were hooked over his thighs.  He pulled his knees up, rolling her hips up.  They were face to face.

His eyelids were heavy.  The ache was still there.  Rey lifted her head and kissed him on the corner of the mouth.  He blinked.

“Let’s, uh, e-enjoy ourselves,” she said.

Kylo Ren pressed his weight down into her and moved, exactly as she needed him to.  She felt as if she were falling, and he must have felt it too because he held onto her shoulders.  He used them as leverage to pull her closer and firmer into him.

It felt more than good.  It was overwhelming.  It was inevitable.

Rey cried out, and his voice echoed.

—

Ren finished not long after her.  He rolled off of her.  As soon as he caught his breath, he sat up.  He rubbed his nose with the back of his metal arm and looked down as if surprised.  He wiped his face with his other hand.

“Not used to it?” said Rey.

“No,” he said.

Ren grabbed his pants and pulled them up as he stood.  He wandered over to the captain’s chair.  He started typing something into the keypad.

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere until you leave.”

Rey swallowed.  He glanced behind him, saw the look on her face.

“I’m not telling you to leave,” he said.  “I’ve already spent too long here.”

“No, I’ll go,” she said.  She sniffed.  He looked away.  He didn’t ask what was wrong.

Kylo Ren was not Ben.

Perhaps that was the lesson for the day.  Maybe that’s why this had happened.

Rey pulled her clothes on.  She checked for her doll and lightsaber and prepared to walk out.

“I have my own feelings,” said Kylo Ren.  “About what happened.”

Rey looked behind her.  Ren was looking at the stars.  “Oh?” she said.

He didn’t look at her.  He nodded.

“Goodnight, Rey,” he said.

“Should I come back?”

He nodded again.  “If you like.”

Rey opened the door out of the cockpit and passed through it.

—

Ren waited until he felt Rey’s presence fade.  He looked behind him.  She was gone.

Ren walked back to his quarters.  He had a change of clothes there and contemplated changing then.  He decided to wait after he’d washed.  He would wash and sleep after the jump.

He found the journal where he’d left it: in the drawer with his change of clothes, next to a vial of his grandfather’s ashes.

He’d thought he’d feel different after.  She’d taken what belonged to him.  He thought this would feel like a reclamation.  She might have crawled into his life, into the hole he’d left when he left his family.  He took some satisfaction in knowing he’d be the one to make her come.

That hadn’t been how he felt.

He had more foresight than most creatures in the galaxy.  He’d seen this day, and his father's death, his betrayal of Luke.  He wondered why he never felt how the thought he would when the moment came.

He closed his eyes and felt through the Force to see if he could glimpse the future.  Ren glimpsed the dark cave Rey stumbled out of, her legs shaky from where he’d left her still aching.  Rey looked up at the sky.  All he saw through her eyes was darkness.

Ren opened his eyes.  The future was unclear to him.

But he had a plan.

He unwrapped Rey’s journal.  He opened it to the last page.  It was blank.  He fingered the pages, delicately turning them backward until he found the first blank page.  There was a pencil tucked into its spine.  He pulled it out and wandered back to the cockpit.

Kylo Ren put his feet up on the console, looked out at the stars.  He, very deliberately, made a mark on the page, one single dark spot on a field of paper white.  

He held his thumb up to the view screen, closed one eye, judged the distances between the stars.

He made another mark.


	5. Chapter 5

Rey passed by her cot and shed her clothes, save for her boots.  She removed those at the water’s edge.  She waded in.  It stung between her legs, but that was fine.  She floated and looked at the stars a while.

Luke had made her float on her back before he’d had her run chest-deep in water.  He said she might run into something called an undertow.  It was not an animal, it was just the water itself.   She could run into it by accident and it could pull her out into the sea.  She needed to know how to float.  Eventually, she would know how to fight it.  She’d have to come at the shore at an angle.

She’d need to know how to swim, though.  She didn’t know how to do that.  But she could float and survive being dragged into the sea for a while.

She was hungry.

“Rey?” she heard.

Rey tucked her knees in and lowered herself into the water.  It was Luke, of course.  He was holding a bowl and spoon.

“Are you all right?”

He peered out at Rey.  Rey wondered if she did not want to tell him what’d happened or simply didn’t have the words to say it all.  Luke saw her clothes on the shore and her face.  He set the bowl of food on the ground and slipped his outer robe off.  He held it up to her.  He averted his eyes.

Rey wandered up out of the water to him and let him wrap her up in it.  He rubbed her arms under the thick cloth to warm her as she shivered.  She relaxed into his arms.  The older man stiffened but accepted it.  Rey felt shame, but Kylo Ren was right.  She needed this.

—

Kylo Ren had put off showering as long as possible.  He’d finished his drawing, started the long sequence of jumps and gone to sleep before he showered.  He’d still smelled like her.  He was curious about why that seemed interesting to him.  It was like a splinter.  Painful, but too interesting not to pick at.

Ren stepped out of the shower attached to his quarters.  It was cramped and had very little water stored, but it was a great luxury in a spacecraft to have a water shower on a spacecraft at all.  He dried his hair, careful not to run the towel over his face.  When he was finished he used the towel to wipe the steam off of the mirror.  He inspected his wounds.

The scar on his sternum had faded since the day before.  There was not another soul in the galaxy who knew his skin well enough to know the scar was there.  He knew.  He could feel the difference when he ran his fingertips across it.  Doctors had insisted on bacta on his side, and that was pink and healthy as well.  Like new.

His face, however, was still angry red at the edges.  Snoke himself was twisted from scar upon scar.   Lord Vader, his grandfather, bore the scars of his own defeat.  Kylo Ren could not go to his Supreme Leader having indulged in vanity.  Great men before Kylo Ren had risen having been scarred by the light.  Snoke had crushed the light-bearer who twisted him.  Vader had crushed Kenobi.  Why should Kylo Ren be too good for the path great men before him had tread?  If someone were greater than him, why would he refuse to be branded by that greatness?  It would be a greater shame to pretend it hadn’t happened.

But now he felt her heartbeat like it was his own.  If he concentrated, he could hear it again.  The same way Snoke could hear Kylo Ren’s.

Kylo Ren was leader’s heart, his lungs, his breath.  He was carved out of his leader’s twisted body and longed to return where he belonged.  Sometimes when Snoke spoke he stared at Snoke’s mouth and longed to crawl into it.  If Kylo Ren’s own body were a compass, if his sternum were a needle, if he collapsed his shoulders inward and let longing overflow from him, he would point to Snoke.  All of him.

Kylo Ren closed his eyes and listened for his Master’s breath and heartbeat.

Instead, against his will, he heard the girl panting underneath him and smelled her on his skin again.  He opened his eyes.  He inhaled deeply, concentrated on what was real.  He smelled only steam and soap.

The girl was a problem.

—

He got himself dressed.  He thought to leave the journal.  Instead, he went to the small storage locker where weapons and survival gear was stored to retrieve waste bin liners.  He pulled one onto each leg, then taped them to his calves.  He wrapped the journal in a third and taped it water-tight.  He wanted it with him.  He would not let it get damaged.

Once he dressed he directed the ship down through the atmosphere.  He did not have direct coordinates, but he could feel planet itself.  It teemed, it beat.  Kylo Ren had heard of Dagobah.  He had heard it was like a living thing, and it was.  On its side there was a great sucking wound, and that was where he needed to be.

He directed his ship toward it and had the sensors scan for solid ground.  He could not find any.  With the size of the footprint of the ship, he would have to land it in a foot of water at least.  The Typhon, folded up as it hovered and splashed down.

Ren lowered the gangplank.  He stared outward, not at the moss-clad trees stretching upwards toward Tattooine's star, but past them into the living Force.

There would be a hut nearby he would need to visit.  He would pay homage there first to the light which had left its mark on Snoke many years before.

—

Luke did not make her climb the stairs up to his cabin.  He built a fire there, on the side of the hill, with flint and sheets of dried moss he pried up off the cliffs.  He’d put her blanket over her shoulders and set himself on a tall rock with the fire dancing between them.  Luke cast a long shadow on the cliffs and Rey cast hers onto the sea.  She fiddled with the spoon in her fingers.

“Eat,” Luke said.

She put the spoon into her mouth and made herself swallow.  She had an urge to speak, but every time she thought of something, some second thing she needed to say to make herself clear would bubble up.  It was too big to say right.

Luke shifted uncomfortably.  “What is the thing that most troubles you?” he said.

Rey’s head jerked up.  She narrowed her eyes.  “What?”

“If you have something to say, pick the thing that troubles you the most.  I won’t judge until you get everything out.”

“How did you know?”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“No, I’m asking a different one.”

“Eat.”

Rey shoveled a spoonful of gruel into her mouth and kept her eyes on Luke.  He cast his eyes upward and sighed.

“You’re my student.  We haven’t spent long together, but certain circumstances can form a kind of bond between people who are strong in the force.”

“What kind of circumstances?”

“Family.  Good friends.  Student and master.”

“Enemies?” said Rey.  The fire crackled. 

“Yeah.  Sometimes.  Anyway, when I say I can feel your rage I’m not being figurative.  I feel it.”

Rey’s need to speak overcame her.

“I can feel Kylo Ren,” she said.  “Not… not clearly.  He’s just….”  Rey waved her hand off behind her ear, where she could not see it.  “You know?”

Luke nodded.  “I used to feel him.”

“Not now?”

“No.  Not since I came here.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.  I trained on a planet called Tatooine.  A cave there was the site of a massacre of Jedi.  Someone tried to re-create it here on Ach-To a couple millennia later.  Anyway, they succeeded.  Yoda, my master, hid on Tatooine because if Vader looked there, he’d just feel the life and the evil of the cave.  Same principle here.  It’s a wound in the force.  It’s a hole to other places.  I’m just one man.  It hides me pretty good.”

“I can feel him, though.”

Luke nodded.  “I figured.  Since when?”

“I guess since I met him.  Maybe before.  It’s… hard to remember not feeling it.  It faded a little when I got here but got worse when I went to complete my training.”

“That’s a problem.  He’ll find a way to use that.  He’ll try to strengthen the bond you two have.  Has he?”

Rey felt the blood drain from her face.  Luke rubbed his hand across his beard and stretched his legs as he stood.

“Not my business anyway,” he muttered.

“You seem really… calm about this.”

“The worst has already happened long before you showed up.  You have to understand.  The Jedi died before I was trained.  All the tradition.  The tradition of the Sith too.  There is nothing to pass down.  You’re not the student I was, you need different things.  I refused to complete my training and never learned what I needed to to guide you or Ben.  I’ve taught you everything I know, and I know it’s bad.  I know.  I failed my previous students and paid for it.  I’ll pay for it again.  I’m just waiting for the end,” said Luke.

Something about his face told here there was something worse than a decade and a half in the sun and rain buried underneath the lines.  Rey didn’t have the courage to coax it out of him.  Rey had faced loneliness.  She did not know what could be worse, and to her shame, did not want to.

“We can fight this,” she said.  Her voice sounded hollow even to herself.

“I am.  In my own way,”  Luke took her bowl from her and started wandering back up the steep steps toward his cabin.  Rey watched his back.

“What do I do?”

“Put the fire out before you sleep,” he called back.  He glanced behind him and caught the look on her face.  He took a breath.

“The bond doesn’t just go one way,” he said.

—

Rey woke up curled on her side on a hard dirt floor.  That was all she could perceive.  There was a circular window which lit the room dimly.  Fetid air whistled through it; it cast a faint green light on an impossibly cramped little room.  She sat up carefully and squinted around.  The ceiling was cracked mud which curved in crude but sinuous arches to the ceiling, which was not high enough for her to stand without stooping.  Kylo Ren was not there.  He was, however, nearby.  She could feel him.

“Where am I now?”  she muttered.

“Mmm, good question,” croaked a little voice, as a bright blue light filled the little space.  Rey started and scrambled to the wall, pressing her back along its curve.  She squinted at the light.  It squinted back at her.  She felt a profound uneasiness.  She felt Ren in the distance, the thrum of the planet, and an inexpressible powerful energy from the little creature in front of her.

“My house, this is,” it said.

“I— I uh—“ Rey opened her mouth.  She asked the first thing that came to mind, “— A-are you a fish?”

Rey had not heard of a sentient species which was translucent.  Unkar Plutt could only keep Rey's full and voluntary attention when talked about the ocean where he was born.  He’d mentioned fish with skin and bones as clear as glass, fish which glowed.

“If a fish I were, my home in water would be.  Yes?”

Rey nodded desperately.

“Come, why have you?”

“I didn’t mean to come here.  I’m training for something.  I’m not sure I should tell you about it.”

“Power it is you seek?  Control?”

“I— I don’t know.”

The creature leaned in.  It poked her shoulder.  It did not touch her.  Her skin broke out in gooseflesh where its little claw passed through her.

“Know you _must_ ,” it said.  “What say your dreams to you?  Your dreams, not the cave.  What must you fight?”

“Kylo Ren.”

“Ben Solo _a child_ is,” said the creature. “What power the cave has, what power Ben Solo has, except to distract?”

“Distract me from what?”

The little creature tapped its own chest.  “My only struggle— _the_ only struggle, _here_ , is.  No quarrel with outsiders have I.”

“He wants to control the galaxy.  I have to stop him.”

The creature looked unimpressed.  “Your life the same would be whoever ruled the galaxy, mm? Yes?”

“He killed Han,” she said.

It nodded.

“Then to Han he surrendered his fate.  If rule Kylo Ren does not, nothing he is.  The smallest worm in the galaxy, if surrender it does not to Kylo Ren, then Kylo Ren to it is nothing.   On it hangs his highest hope.  The galaxy, life itself, the stars: they Kylo Ren do not need.  Kylo Ren the need has; Kylo Ren dependent is.  And so surrendered to that worm he has.  No power he has except what he by theft takes. What quarrel could you have with him?  Adrift he is, a chid he is.  Why defeat him?  Defeated long ago he was.”

Rey opened her mouth.  She did not feel herself start to cry, but she had started crying.  A tear fell off her chin.  She wiped her face in frustration.

“People will suffer.  It matters.”

Its eyes softened at the edges, tightened with a mischievous energy.  It pointed at her.  “ _That_ the truth is.  Remember _that_ you must.  Turn inward with your struggle.  For all else, compassion have.”

She heard Kylo Ren’s footfalls outside.

“You need to hide,” she said.

It cackled.  Her eyes flew to the door as Kylo Ren’s hand wrapped around the handle.   The blue light snuffed out and the laughter faded as he opened the door.


	6. Chapter 6

The door creaked open.  Kylo Ren stooped in the doorway.  His eyes were wide.  Rey held her breath and hoped Ren could not see her and had not seen the shining translucent creature.

“Where is he?”

“Who?” said Rey.

Ren’s eyelashes flickered; not even a full blink.  He looked down at his boots.  He leaned against the curve of the wall, closed the door, and pulled his boots off.

“You’re a bad liar,” he said.

“We can’t all be as talented as you are.”

Kylo Ren reached for his side instinctively, and Rey for hers when she saw his arm move.  Both came back empty.  He bore his teeth at her.

“I have never lied to you,” he said.

“I never said you lied to _me_.”

“Do you say anything that isn’t pale imitation of my mother and my uncle?”

“Your mother never said a _word_ about you to me or anyone else.  Nobody had to tell me what to think of you.  I had to find out about them being your family from some _book_.”

He tilted his head back.  “What book?”

Rey pursed her lips.  Ren sunk to his knees and started crawling across the floor barefoot.  She pressed her back against the wall. 

“What color is it, Rey?  Is it blue?”

Rey felt a muscle by her eye twitch.  His eyebrows went up.

“Have I made the histories?”

“As a father-killer.”

“Mother wrote that?”

“I did.”

Ren laughed.  He looked like a boy, gap-toothed and deep-lined at the corners of his eyes, and Rey’s vision went almost white immediately.  She drew her hand back and he caught it before it hit his face.  She yanked at her arm.  He held onto her wrist and sat on her knees.  He ignored her as she struggled.

“You don’t understand,” he said.

“I do.”

“I have made history.”

“I read that whole thing.  I was just _bored_ by it.  I didn’t feel anything for _anyone_ in that book.  Nobody will care who you are in a thousand years.”

“They care _now_.  You wouldn’t have written anything if you didn’t care,” said Kylo Ren.

“Your _mother_ cared.  I cared about Han.”

“You didn’t do that for Han.  He’s dead.  You didn’t eulogize him.  You didn’t write about what a _great_ man he was.  You wrote about _me_.”

“How do you know?”

“There’s nobody alive who’d inflict him on posterity.”

“Don’t you talk about him.”  Rey squirmed under his grip and stopped when she saw his satisfaction.

“ _I_ spent _my_ life with him.  You knew him what, six hours?  You call me arrogant, you’re writing _my_ family’s history.  What gives you the right?”

“Because you _lost_.”

He slammed his knuckles and her wrists against the wall.  He closed his eyes, his jaw working.

“You are correct,” he said.  He looked at her mouth.  He slowly bent forward.  Rey kept her breath steady as he kissed the corner of her mouth.

“It’s an honor to finally meet something greater than myself,” he said.  She couldn’t tell if he was sarcastic.

“Enough, that is,” they heard something croak.

Rey and Ren saw a little glowing figure sitting on the edge of the tiny bed.  Ren gripped Rey’s wrists tighter and twisted to see.

“ _You_ ,” said Ren.

“Me it is.  My house this is.  Heard me this young lady has not, I fear.”

“I—“ said Rey.  The creature held up its claw sternly at her.

“Listen you will or not.  My fight this is not.  But my home respect will you both.”

“You left my master for dead,” said Kylo Ren.

The little creature peered at him and swung his legs.  “Your master, who is he?”

“Supreme Leader Snoke.  He remembered.  He sent your last apprentice to hide on a hovel and die.”

“Spared his life, I did, hmm?  Mmm.  Many lives spared have I.  Remember him I do not.  Choices Luke made long before you to the dark side were seduced, and those his fate created.  Not Snoke.  No, remember him I will not.”  

The way the creature said it, there was no malice.  It was a simple fact.  The little creature slid off the bed and hobbled to his door.  He waved his little claw and it opened.

“You two, however, remember I will.”

It closed its eyes, raised its little arms, and as it jerked its arms across the air, Rey and Kylo Ren lifted off the ground and hurdled through the doorway.

—

Rey’s wrists disappeared out of Ren’s fist as he passed through the door.  He landed on his back and skid through mud into shallow water.  He sat up, ready to fight.  He saw his boots fly out of the door of the hovel and into waist-deep water before it slammed shut.  They floated on the surface of the water.  One made an odd bubbling sound as it started to take on water.  He stood, stalked over to them, and grabbed them before marching to the closed doorway and rattling the knob.  It would not budge.  He cast his body against it, slamming it once and again against the door frame.  The door held unnaturally fast.

He threw himself one last time, and as he did, the walls of the hovel cracked, then fell.  A chunk of wall rolled down the little hill and into the water.  It melted into a pile of gelatinous mud and grass.

Yoda would not speak to Ren again, and Ren could not make him.

Ren opened his mouth and screamed.

—

Rey woke up to Ren’s scream echoing off the cliffs and the little birds which made their homes in those cliffs cackling at him.  Rey’s heart raced.  She found her saber and doll under her bed and clutched them.  She did not remember all of what she dreamed, but she remembered how it felt.

The screaming distressed her.  Rey had heard a baby cry and cry in the Jakku sun.  This was a similar kind of maddening.

She looked up, in the direction of the cave, a quarter turn around the island.  It wanted her.  It needed her.  It was her friend, and it needed her.  Where was she?  It may have used Ren’s voice, but the cave was screaming.  Not Ren.  Ren was nobody.  The dark firmament between the stars which had been there since the dawn of time which had taken up residence in the cave and in her dreams called to her.

 _Come back_ , it screamed in her own voice.  The voice shifted, distorted.  She swore she heard a second one, quieter.  Finn’s.  Kylo held a certain interest.  But the thought of Finn in pain and her not there ripped at her.  Finn was awake now, it told her.  She only had to come for him.

Rey stood shakily and started walking.  She didn’t even put on her boots.  She started walking, dazedly.  The voice calmed as she approached, but still insisted.  It whispered.  It ran its fingers along her neck.

Nobody had ever known her the way the cave had, it said.  Nobody longed for her the way the cave did, it said.  Rey stood at the entrance, staring at the black sheet set into the rocks.  It was not as deeply set into the cave now.  The dark membrane stretched across part of the cliff face.  Where the sun lit the face of the rock, the black sheet simply refused illumination.  It was not the black of sleep or night time.  It was the black of passing out and losing time as she had when Kylo Ren had taken her from the forest of Takodana.   It was the black of the time before Rey was born and after she would pass from the galaxy.

Rey closed her eyes to prepare for that falling feeling.  Something made her hesitate.  She had dreamed of someone besides Ren.  She tried to recall.  It came back to her quickly.  

Yoda was a liar, it said.

Rey blinked.   She took a step back. 

“Who is Yoda?” she said aloud.

The void was quicker than she was.  It lurched forward and swallowed her.

—

Ren fished his boots out of the water and shoved his feet into them.  His clothes clung to him.  He carefully undid his surcoat and hung it in a tree next to the rubble of the great master’s house.  It would not dry in the humidity, but it would not cling to him and weigh him down.  After a moment’s thought, he also removed the gorget from his neck.    He wouldn’t need it in the cave anyway.

He had not expected Yoda to speak to him.  Yoda was an enemy.  There was a kind of indignity that he would appear to the girl.

The cave was not far, but the bog sucked at Ren’s boots.  Moss hung down from vines in tendrils which grabbed at him.  As he came closer to the cave, the wind picked up.  He thought he could hear a woman scream.  He thought it was his mother at first.  As he approached, he knew the voice.

It was the girl’s.

He stopped and listened.

There was something about it.  He did not expect to be indifferent.  His lips felt numb.  He pressed his tongue against the inside of them and winced as the voice took a breath.

Ren started walking again, and though the mud sucked at him, he soon broke into a run.  He did not stop until he crossed the cave threshold and the firmament fell out from beneath him.

—

Rey pounded against the door of the hospital room and cursed.  Finn was inside a bacta tank in the middle of the room, hanging suspended.  She pounded her shoulder against the room door.  Would not budge.

“I’m not playing along.  You can’t keep me here.”

Rey wore herself hoarse and sore and tearful as she realized it could.  It absolutely could.  She started searching the room for something to write with.  She found a pen, but no paper.

Rey heard something in the tank.  She startled and looked.  Finn’s eyes were open.  He was confused.  He was frightened.  She heard a little monitor start dinging.  She ran over.  He started pulling at the tubes which ran from the top of the tank down into his throat.  Rey shook her head emphatically at him and tapped on the glass.

“No, nonono,” she said.

He saw her and stopped.  He held his hand up to the glass.

Rey wanted to do the same in kind, but she didn’t know whether she had the time.  She stalked over to the wall and wrote, in large block letters:

“Please come and get me.  Whatever you have to do.  Please.”

She heard someone outside the door, and as they stepped through, the ground underneath Rey opened and she fell again.

—

Ren landed somewhere hot.  The light was yellow and the floor was pounded dust.  He might have mistaken it for Jakku, but Jakku favored tin roofs.  The walls here were adobe with large open windows.  Twin suns hung low in the sky.  Ren’s lips parted.  He thought of his grandfather.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” said a world-weary voice in a clipped inner world accent.  Ren wheeled around.  He was nose to nose with an elderly bearded man in Jedi robes.  He was not a force ghost.

“Have a seat,” the man said.  “I’m expecting company.  A young man named Luke, I think.  But I’ve a little time for you before he arrives.”

He indicated a chair.  Ren stood.  His eyes landed on the leather-bound chest in the corner of the room.

“This is not where I die, young man.  You might as well have a seat and talk to me.  I might have something you want.”

Ren balled his fists.  He took a seat.

“You were once Lord Vader’s master.”

“I was never Darth Vader’s master.  I knew a man he killed named Anakin.  An old friend.”

“He’ll kill you,” said Kylo Ren.  He looked for the old man’s reaction.  The old man sat.  He remained weary and impassive.

“Sounds like something he’d do.  What’s your name?”

“Kylo Ren.”

“I’m Ben.”

“You are Obi-Wan Kenobi.  You could have led the Jedi council.  You were weak.  The Jedi were weak.   You’ll spend the next few days of your life helping a farmer and a drug dealer sow chaos with a spoiled political dissident.  You will succeed.  The rim worlds which were fed are now starving.  They are junk yards full of child slaves digging through the scraps of order the Empire created.  You will destroy tens of thousands of trade-routes in some self-righteous quest for self-determination.  For who?  There are maybe ten million lives it will positively impact, and the upheaval will harm trillions more.  I have seen it.  Your perverse ideals only sow chaos which the weak use to prey upon the strong.   You justify it by saying maybe someone else’s grandchildren _might_ be happy.  Nobody knows where they come from.  They stare at the stars and feel their greatness and scrub the dust off of spare parts for half a day’s food because _you_ have ideals we all must live by.  I would never have let that happen.”

Obi-Wan smiled, a warm half-grimace.  “I suppose that’s fair.  Are we to go with birth names or the names we choose?  I’m happy to do either.”

“We are enemies.  Our names are not important.”

“I’m too old for enemies.  Too lonely, frankly,” he leaned forward conspiratorially. “I’m happy for the visitors.  It’s not often you get to meet your legacy before you die.”

“I am not _your_ legacy.”

“I don’t mean to be selfish about it.  Limitations of language.  We’re part of a common thread.  Is this part of your final test?  You’re a little old for it, but you’re clearly talented.  Well-spoken.  I’m sure your master’s proud of you.”

Ren did not answer.  The old man read the tightness in his lips.

“Ah.  Well, the Sith are… stern.  I was not demonstrative myself.  Perhaps I should have been.  Something to remember for the coming days.”

“I am no Sith.  The Sith were destroyed.”

“Were they?  Well,” said Obi-Wan.

“There is no tradition left.  It’s just us now.”

“You and…?”

“Rey,” said Ren.  He hurriedly added.  “And Master Snoke.  Luke is….”

“That _is_ unfortunate.”  He glanced at Ren.  “I would not want to be in your spot.”

“We could have been happy.  You could have left us an orderly galaxy to inherit.  A foundation.”

The old man gazed out the window.  His eyes moved.  Ren had interrogated hundreds.  He could see some things others could not.  Little movements in the muscles around the eyes.  Obi-Wan was unreadable.  He might have been on the verge of tears, or filled with resolve.  He reminded Ren of Lor San Tekka, but with none of the self-righteous defiance.

Obi-Wan stood by some invisible cue.

“I’m afraid our time is up, young man”

“Did you listen to me?”

“I have.  I will consider it.  I see clearly you have been made less than you could have been in a galaxy with some stability or with a well-trained master.  I believe you.  But now there is a young man about to be in trouble.  Son of an old friend.  I must see to him.”

Kylo Ren scoffed as he stood.  “I have learned nothing here.  This has not tempted me to the light.”

The man took his staff from the corner of the room and stood in front of Ren.  Ren puffed his chest out.  He held his hand out and patted Ren on the arm, then walked past him.

“This was not _your_ temptation, young man.  I’m just sorry you’ve been reduced to something’s tool.  I want you to know, I _am_ moved.  I will not forget you.”

Ren opened his mouth.  The old man adjusted the hood of his cloak to venture out into the desert heat.

Ren tried to think of something to keep him from going.   He tried, “Don’t you pity—“

But the old man was out the door, and Ren began to fall.

—

Rey was in the cockpit of the ship where Ren had slipped inside of her.  There were armor-clad storm troopers at the helm.  The stars streaked across the view screen.  They could not see her.  The door to the back was open.  Rey walked through the narrow gunmetal gray halls, dazed.   All the doors were open.  The storage room door, to her right in the hall, was open.  There was a door to a small water closet, and it was open.  All the way in the back the door to his chamber was open.  She walked toward it.  The air flowed in that direction.  Life was easier in that direction.  It was where she was meant to go, and there was not much point in resisting.

The void would let her go when she had learned.

The room was not large.  It had a dresser in the corner, a bed built into the wall, and a burnished metal table in the middle of the room.  Kylo Ren, masked, sat on the bed.  Rey— herself— was draped across his lap.  He’d taken his gloves off and put them on the side of the bed.  His hand propped up her former self’s head.  His mask hovered very close to the passed out girl’s face.  She heard him breathe.  She was glad the table was between herself and the two figures.  She was tempted to vault over it and strangle him to rescue herself.

And then she heard a second breathing sound, behind her.

“You’re disgusting, you know that?”

The other masked Ren did not respond.   He couldn’t hear her.  The Ren behind her, the one who had just arrived, did.

“I don’t owe you an explanation,” he said.

Rey crossed her arms and watched the former Ren inspect her.  She judged him judging her.

“You look just like her,”  said Ren.  “That’s what I was thinking.  I dreamed about her for years.  I’ve seen them meet.  Make love.  Make dinner.  It’s torture.  You dreamed of them once and it haunted you.  I dreamed of them almost every night for years.”

Rey wiped her nose with her arm.  “Still doesn’t give you the right.”

Ren’s fingers curled around her shoulders.  She put her palms on the table in front of her.

“In a different galaxy, in one with order, we could have been different people.  We would have met.  We would have been happy.  We would have had the luxury of being who we were meant to be.”

“I like who I am.”

Ren tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear.  He draped his chest across her back.  He weighed on her.

“You weren’t born to be a scavenger.  Together we could rule the galaxy.”

Rey started laughing.  Ren kissed her neck.  She shrugged him off and looked behind her at him.  He gave her a peevish glare.

“I’m asking Finn to take me off the planet.  Away from the cave.  I think he’ll come.”

“Which planet?”

“Ha.  Nice try.  I’m going to go to an outer rim world and… I don’t even know.  You all can have one another.  I’m done.”

“You could unite the galaxy.  You are one of the most talented people of your generation.  You have the power.  That gives you the right.  I would follow you.”

“I never wanted power.  I don’t know why this place would offer it to me.”

“What do you want?” he said.

“What?”

“Name it.”

Rey turned.  He leaned over her.  He pressed his palms on the table on either side of her.

“I used to think I didn’t want to be alone,” she said.  She looked up at his eyes.  They were an interesting golden brown, with darker ruddy brown around the pupil.  The skin around his neck was red.

“And now?” he said.

“There are worse things than being alone.”

He nodded.  He leaned forward.  He pressed his mouth against hers.  She leaned back.  His hands wrapped around her and he lifted her onto the table.  He pulled away and kissed her neck.  He kissed down to the fabric between her beasts and, finding himself hindered, gripped the fabric of her tunic and ripped it open.  Rey exhaled sharply in protest, and again when his mouth pressed against her breast.  She felt the points of his teeth in her flesh.   She exhaled and ran her fingers through his hair.

“Tell me where you are,” he said between kisses.

“No.”

“I am at your service,” he said.

She shook her head.  He ran his tongue down her stomach and, once more hindered by the cloth of her breeches, rent the fabric off of her hips, tore it off her, parted her thighs, and ran his tongue down the hair under the curve of her belly.  He pulled her hips to the edge of the table, knelt.  She didn’t feel she could look at him.  She stared at the ceiling.

He parted her outer lips with his fingers and looked a moment before burying his nose in her hair, his mouth kissing her inner lips, at first little different from the languid way he’d pressed his tongue into her mouth when he’d been on top of her.  But the moment soon became more rhythmic, specific, insistent.  It was too much.  She squirmed and he pulled her closer to him but slowed a little.  Rey felt a pleasant warmth build.

He pulled away for a moment to breathe and wet two fingers in his mouth. He pressed them between her lips and into her, then started again, working his fingers in and out of her, pressing against her upper walls while he licked her.  Rey leaned back and covered her mouth.  It was alien, it was amazing.  It was all she could do not to rock her pelvis into his face.  A little squeak escaped from her closed throat, and he moaned.  She glanced down.  Her eyes met his, and when she saw what he was doing to her, her body tensed around his fingers, her mouth opened in wordless pleasure.  Her elbow weakened.  She fell back onto her back, suddenly weak with a drugged pleasure.

Rey was disoriented for a moment.  Her skin was slick with sweat, she was cold.  His fingers slipped out of her, and she heard cloth rustle.  She lifted her head and almost butted him in the head as he descended on her.  His bare chest pressed against hers.  He kissed her.  She tasted herself on his mouth.  She ran her fingers through his hair.  His penis slipped easily inside of her.  He wrapped his arms under her body and used his strength to slam into her and again.  He pushed from his toes on the floor all the way into her body on the table.  He fucked her like he would crawl into her body if he could.  They pulled one another in.

They finished, Rey and then Ren in quick succession.

And then the void pulled them apart and spat them out.

—

Ren flew out of the cave into the mud, pants around his ankles, and landed on his shoulder.  He cried out and sat up.  He looked around, disoriented.

“Rey?” he shouted.

He didn’t hear her.  He listened for her. He reached out through the force through her.

He saw Rey, on a rocky shore, looking down at her torn clothes, at the bruises on her thigh.  Rey looked up at the stars.

Ren could see them.  He blinked, or maybe Rey did.  They blinked together.  He could not feel the difference, and he never wanted to.

Ren stumbled up onto dry land, pulled Rey’s journal out of his pocket, still looking up at the planet’s stars.  Almost blind to the world in front of him, he found the brightest patch of stars and started sketching them.  A dozen patches of light would do it.  There would only be one spot in the galaxy with those stars.

He had her. She would understand.  She could not argue with success.  She would have him.  He knew.  He knew.


	7. Chapter 7

Rey staggered across the rocky beach, dazed.  She almost felt as if it was not her staring at the stars.  Her blouse hung open and her clothes were torn at the crotch.  She reached up for her hair which felt odd.  One of the leather ties which kept her hair in place was missing.

She looked back at the cave.  Once more the blackness had grown.  The cave itself wasn’t visible any longer.  The darkness had flowed over the edge and had started creeping into the cracks of the cliff face, running through them like blood through arteries.  She heard a quiet muttering from it when she looked at it.  Rey shuddered and looked away.

In time the absent feeling faded and she felt a little more present.  She crossed her arms across her chest and made her way back to her cot.  Luke’s robe was still draped across it.  She took her leather belt off, wrapped the robe around herself, and put the belt on over it to secure it.  She was tired.  She longed for dreamless sleep.  She wouldn’t find it if she tried.

Rey stepped out of her ripped breeches and sat on the edge of her cot.  She tore the cloth carefully into a long strip. She tried to use used it re-fasten her top bun.   She couldn’t get it as tight as her leather laces. She tried again with the same messy result.  She pulled her hair out of her buns and ran her fingers through it.  Her fingers ached.  She’d have to wait to try again.

“ _Hell_ ,” she said.

She looked up towards Luke’s cabin, a little brown dot on the side of the cliff in daytime, and not much to see at night either.

There was a faint blue light shining on the cliffside.

She stood, gathered her doll and her lightsaber: clipped to her belt.  Insects sang at the sliver of bronze moon high in the sky.  Without the moon, she had to take her time to find the foot of the staircase, feel the stairs below her.  As Rey approached she heard quiet voices.

“— wish you would reconsider,” said an older man’s voice.  “It has the hallmarks of a rash decision.”

“It’s bold,” said a young man’s voice.  His accent was like Luke’s, outer rim.  “I probably shouldn’t say I support it.”

“He cannot be allowed to succeed,” said Luke. “Not with what’s at stake.”

Rey crept closer.  She crouched and crawled up close to the door.  She went slow.  She was quieter than faint hiss of the wind.  She leaned against the door frame.  Her body rocked with her heartbeat while she listened.

“Of course not, but is this necessary?  Are you conceding the war to win a single battle?  You owe your padawan stability, if nothing else,” said the older voice.

“Are you saying I didn’t provide it?”

“I would not presume to criticize.”

The young man and Luke both laughed at him.

The older man said, “If you _must_ know what I think, it’s that the past holds a lesson.  You risk making the same mistakes again.  I made the same mistake twice, I did not listen when I had the chance. Your padawan needs you to be present, to provide some order.”

“You sound like Ben,” said Luke.

“I _am_ Ben.  Last I checked.”

Rey tensed.  She gripped her saber hilt.

Luke sighed, exasperated.

“I fear you are asking too much of your young padawan and leaving her little in return,” said the old man. “What of the next generation?”

“I can be present as you have been,” said Luke.

“Have I been present?” said the young man, a confused humor in his voice.

“ _No_ ,” said the old man sharply.  “Our actions might influence the present, but our greatest legacy is with those alive now.”

Rey’s curiosity burned.  Ben wasn’t a common name.  She thought if it were Ben, Kylo Ren as an old man, he’d feel something like him.  She reached out with her mind, through the force, into the little hut.

“We have a visitor,” said the young voice.  “Hello?”

A luminous blue figure stepped out of the doorway.  Rey looked up at it.  It was human-shaped and very tall, at least as tall as Kylo Ren if not more so.  He was in Jedi robes, his hair long like Ren's.  He was handsome.

Rey’s mouth hung open.

“Are you Rey?” he said.

She nodded.

“I’m, uh, well…” his face worked.  He gave her a sheepish smile.  “Sorry.  It’s hard to explain?  Come in?”

Rey scrambled to her feet, tense.  She stepped through the threshold of the cabin.  Every corner was filled with soft blue light from the two ghostly figures of the old man and the young one.  The old man sat in the dining room chair and Luke on the edge of the bed.  She and the young man remained standing.

Luke’s eyebrows rose at what she was wearing.

“My, uh, clothes tore,” said Rey.

He cleared his throat.  The old man did so as well.

“Would you introduce me?” said the old man.

“Oh,” said Luke.  “Yeah.  This is my master, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“He said he was Ben,” blurted out Rey.

The old man’s face moved almost imperceptibly.  Rey felt guilty and was not quite sure why.

“I also went by Ben,” he said.  Obi-Wan cast his eyes over to the young man.  Luke caught Obi-Wan and Rey’s eye and didn’t say anything.

“Should I say?” said the young man.

“I don’t know if she’ll take it well,” said Luke.

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” spat Rey.

“Quite right,” said Obi-Wan.  “Where are our manners?  Young lady, this is my former padawan Anakin Skywalker.”

“ _What_ ,” said Rey.  She put her hand on her hip, on her saber hilt, and started backing away.

The young man tilted his head down and scratched between his eyebrows with the backs of his nails.

“You’re _dead_ ,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“As am I, I’m afraid,” said Obi-Wan.  He pointed at the younger figure.  “He killed me.”

Anakin tightened his lips sheepishly.  The old man seemed annoyed, but not upset, which greatly undercut for her the old man’s credibility.  Rey looked from one to the other, incredulous.

“It’s not funny to call someone Darth Vader. He murdered… he murdered thousands.”

“Billions,” said the old man flatly.

“It’s not funny,” said Rey.

The young man grimaced.  It didn’t seem real enough.  She was not sure what reaction would be real enough for that.

“Shouldn’t you be apologetic?” said Rey.

“I feel like ’sorry’ doesn’t cut it,” said the young man.

“You might try,” said Obi-Wan.

“Would it be enough?” said Anakin.

“No,” said Obi-Wan.

“Well, I am.  Sorry, I mean.  I am sorry.”

Rey looked hard at Luke.  She pointed at Anakin.

“Is that your dad?  Darth Vader?”

Luke nodded.  “Yeah.”

“Dead people can come back?” said Rey, accusing.  Yet another thing he hadn’t told her.

“If they are strong in the light side of the force, yes.  They can exert their presence.”

“Why haven’t you been here?”

“We come where and when it is our time,” said Obi-Wan.

Rey made a face at him.  He raised his eyebrows at her.

“Young lady, not every question has an answer you will like.  I’m sure you have others which might enlighten you further.”

Rey thought.

“Who is Yoda?”

All three men looked surprised.

“Have you met?” said Luke.

“I think so,” said Rey.

“You don’t know?” said Obi-Wan. “He is distinctive.”

“He didn’t say his name.”

The men traded glances.

“Who did?” said the young man.

“The cave.  It said ‘Yoda’s a liar.’”

“Oh, good heavens,” said Obi-Wan.  Anakin shifted from foot to foot.  Luke passed his hand over his beard.

“I need to do it,” said Luke.  “It’s been growing, I feel it.  I have to do it.”

“Do what?” said Rey.

“Ben….” said Luke.  He spoke as if the words were heavy as if he couldn’t bear not to say them any longer. “Ben attempted the final trial before he was ready.  I didn’t give him what he needed.  He snuck in after I went to sleep.  I think he wanted to prove something.  He took something back out with him.”

“What did he take?” said Rey.

“Possibility,” said Anakin.  He smiled warmly at her, as if he knew a secret she and he shared which the other two men could not fathom.

Her skepticism was gone.  This was a man who had felt ten trillion pulses stop, heard them all rushing in his ears, ten billion all at once on Alderaan, the right-hand man of the Emperor who made that happen.  This was absolutely that man.  

Something in him recognized something in her.

Rey shuddered and, to her shame, did not run.

“We need your help,” said Anakin.

—

Ren could put off sleep no longer.  He took off every stitch of sodden clothing in the store room and shoved them into the processor.  His face hurt, and on top of his fatigue, it grated at him.  His eye caught the bottle of bacta by the medkit.  He dismissed the thought.

The computer was still narrowing down the possible star systems and would be for hours.  He took a quick sonic shower to get the mud out of his hair.  It took all he had to make it into his bed and pull the blanket up around his shoulders rather than lying on the floor.

—

Ren found himself leaning against the wall of Ben’s stateroom, watching his wife get ready.  She was in her dressing gown.  One handmaiden fussed at her hair, the other applied flat white makeup to her face.  An older man with a pointed beard and flowing blue-green robes stood next to her, reading aloud from his data pad briefing.

“— and a large freighter crashed into one of the moons of Bogden.”

“Do you believe the Rebellion was responsible?”

“Initial reports suggest pilot error.  The results of the investigation will be out in a month or two.”

“Mmm.  Send gifts to the families anyway, the same as we do for any terrorist attack.”

“But madam—“

“You are not suggesting the Rebellion is above this kind of petty treachery?” she said.

“No madam.”

“Then we should not be cruel to the families of their _potential_ victims simply because rebellion involvement is not yet confirmed.  Chaos undoes lives.  A year’s wages for each member of the immediate family so they will not be crushed by the chaos of the Rebellion.”

“Yes, madam.”

“Is that all?”

“There will be several committee meetings after the Senate is opened.  I will brief you on them before the memorial dinner.”

“Thank you.”

The man gave a half bow and strode out.  She looked at Ben’s reflection in the mirror.  Ben had a light beard.  He himself was dressed in a long gray surcoat, Anakin’s lightsaber clipped to his belt.  It was more symbolic than functional.  Rey had had the kyber crystal removed as a precaution after she succeeded Palpatine three years prior.

“Have you felt anything?” Rey asked.

“About the accident?  No.”

“Would you ask your grandfather about it?”

“If we have not felt it—“

“Please?  I’d like his reassurance.”

Ben nodded.

The handmaidens finally seemed ready with the state of Rey’s face and hair.  They left the room to wash their hands before handling Rey’s gown.  It was draped across their bed: long, black, and heavy with feathers and beading.  She glanced at it and sighed.

“I wonder if I can convince anyone to just let me wear the robe when we open the Senate.”

“Maybe next year,” said Ben.

“They didn’t make Palpatine wear this nonsense.”

“Well, Palpatine was a naturally humble man.  And looked very bad in a dress.”

Rey laughed.  “If you would go ask Lord Vader,” she said.

“What, now?”

Rey’s voice took on a keen edge. “Yes, Senator.  Now.”

He bowed and placed his hand across her heart.  “Empress,” he said.

Ben walked out the door, past the Red imperial guard ready to escort his wife to the Senate chambers.  He strode through the marble halls of the Senate, down the stairs to the basement.  Lord Vader’s room was marked by the Storm Troopers on either side of it and the mist that crept out from under the door.

“Senator?”  said one of the troopers.

“I have business with Lord Vader.  Is he lucid?”

“I have not heard otherwise today, sir.”

Ben nodded.  He took a deep breath and steeled himself before opening the door.

The room was filled with a mechanical buzzing noise and the smell of disinfectant.  It was sparsely decorated.  Anything more would be too difficult to keep sterile.

The room was kept dim, bathed red light for Lord Vader’s sensitive eyes.   Yet Lord Vader’s skin was a brilliant translucent white, like soap.  He laid in the hospital bed, gasping for air.

Palpation’s death had lessened him.  He had been adrift.  In the days that followed the loss of his master, he had taken on Ben and Rey as apprentices to pass on what he knew.

Ben opted not to finish his training.  Rey was more naturally gifted.  Rey was beautiful.  The Sith did not tolerate peers, and if both continued on that path one would inevitably kill the other.  He ceased his training and on the same day proposed.  

Rey had said yes.  It was a fortuitous match.  They had been happy.

When Vader’s work was done he started spending more time out of the suit than in it.  Now, he would not even get into it for the opening of the Senate.

Vader's breath rattled in his throat.  His eyes were glassy.  In the concentrated oxygen atmosphere of the room he did not always need his ventilator, but he'd had a series of infections which had made breathing progressively harder in the past few months.  He'd refused to wear the ventilator.  His plastic oxygen mask sat beside his head on the pillow.

Ben knelt by the bed.  “Grandfather.  Master.”

“Ben?”

“Yes.”

“I want to talk to the other one,” he rasped.

“Rey is indisposed, grandfather.”

“No.  He is here.”

“It’s Ben, grandfather.”

“I know who I am speaking to.”

Ben bowed his head, pained.  He started over.  “Do you know about the attack on Bogden?  Have you felt it?”

“That is not important,” said Vader.  He turned his head to look into and through Ben’s eyes.

“When my wife died, I spent my life trying to create a galaxy that never was.  A world of order.  She may not have been proud of me, but she would have been by my side.  That’s what I told myself.  But she never did come back.  That’s not how it works.”

Ben gripped his grandfather’s shoulder.  “The Empire thrives.  We will continue your work.”

“This is where I will die.  In this room.”

“Your work will live on.”

Vader coughed.  “M-my work,” he said derisively.  

Fits of coughing wracked his body, threw his covers off.  His ribs showed under his patchy bleached scar tissue, torn in places where it was thin.  He had refused more skin grafts.  Bacta would repair it, but it would still be thin, and it tore again with every coughing fit.   His face contorted with the effort of calming himself.

“You must not let it take over,” said Vader.

“The Rebellion?”

“The life that isn’t yours.  What never was.  It is jealous it never existed.  It will consume you if you let it. It is not your friend.  It’s using you.  You were left adrift, you’ve been used like a puppet for years by some— some petty nobody.  You’ve been hollowed out.  You’re so eager to be filled, and it knows that.  It’ll fill you if you let it, it’ll use you to cross over.  There’s you Rey, and— and another, left vulnerable, but you most of all. You must commit to your life now, not what could have been.  Do not repeat your family’s mistakes.”

Ben’s lip shook.

“Grandfather, I have atoned many times over for Leia’s treas—“

“ _My_ , mistakes, Kylo Ren,” he gasped.  “Mine.  Not Leia’s.”

Ben did not recognize the name.  Something about it gave him chills.  His grandfather gasped like a fish, struggling to keep his composure so he could breathe.  Ben stood, shakily.  He pulled the blanket back up over Lord Vader’s chest and put the oxygen mask over his face.  His breathing began to calm again.

“I will be back, grandfather.”

Ben left the room hurriedly, engrossed in his own thoughts.  He was halfway to the stairs before he turned back, motioned to the Storm Trooper he’d spoken to on the way in.  He stepped closer to Ben.

“He’s very near the end.  I feel he is in more pain than his medication is helping with.”

“More will depress his breathing.”

Ben nodded.  He wet his lips.  “Whatever he needs to be comfortable.  Do you understand me?  Whatever he needs.  I will be back in an hour.  I will be here.”

“Sir,” said the Storm Trooper.  Ben turned away.  He heard the trooper radio to the medical wing.

Ben was in a daze as he returned to the State Room.  His wife was dressed and waiting for him.   A high collar of black feathers held her neck straight.  Ben looked at the marble floor.

“What did he say?”

“He said it was not important,” said Ben.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think it’s his time,” said Ben.

“Is that why you want them to increase his pain medication?”

Ben’s head jerked up.  “You heard?”

“Lord Vader’s service is valuable to us.  I take an interest in his health.”

Ben chose his words carefully.  “His life is coming to its natural end.”

Rey moved toward him, feathers glinting against the flat black abyss of her gown.  She dragged the train across the room.  It left a slick that ate away at the floor.  He could see the stars.  He looked into her eyes.  Her pupils were large, dark.  Her lips were white.

She lifted her hand and ran it across his face.  She drug her thumb across his lips.  He turned his face into her palm like a plant turns its leaves toward the sun.

“You would miss him too much,” his empress said.  “You need him.  Your grandfather has been an anchor in a storm for all of us, most of all for you.  I could not do it to you.  You aren’t strong enough to live without him,” she said.

Ben felt a sharp pain in his chest.  He bent as if stabbed.

“Oh, darling,” she said.  She put her other hand on his face.  He squeezed his eyes shut.  He did not want to see her watch him cry.  “I know it is terrible, but I will do what I must.  I know what you need.  I’m here to protect you, to provide.  Nobody could ever love you the way I love you.”

Ben wrapped his hands around her wrists.  “Stop,” he and Kylo Ren said, in one voice.

“When the time comes, push her in.  Her or the traitor.  I will be waiting.”

Her nails dug into his skin, and he woke up.

—

Ren rolled out of bed, sweating and shaking.  He sunk to the floor.  The metal was hard and cold against his buttocks.  He reached up to his face to see if it was bleeding.

Once he caught his breath he walked to the utility room to retrieve his underclothes, now washed and dried.  He thought of grabbing the rest of his clothes from the processor.  If he did he’d have no need to return to the store room.  No reason at all.

He wandered to the cockpit to see if the computer had finished its calculations.

It had.  The stars fit three potential systems, but the only one with any mention of significance to the Jedi was Ach-To.  The computer had already mapped out a jump route, three hours at hyper speed.

The beginning of the jump was uneventful.  Once the stars were streaking past the view screen, he unbuckled from the pilot’s chair and wandered back to his bathroom to shave.  He spent fifteen minutes in the mirror, staring at himself, pulling a blade across his own neck and face, wincing at how the motion of shaving tugged at his wound.

Lightsaber wounds were slow to heal.  Skin had started growing inwards from the edges of the wound.  It had already started to scar.  The loose muscles drug downward on his lower eyelid, exposing the pink inner rim to air, which irritated the eye.  It was red and dry and yet wept constantly.  He tried moving his cheek.  It did not cooperate.  It merely slumped and hurt.

Ren leaned against the sink and thought.  He would see Rey soon.  There would always be a scar there to remind him.  They would be together all their lives looking at one another’s faces.  He wondered how deep her reminder needed to go.

He returned to the storeroom to retrieve the remainder of his clothes from the processor.  He looked at the bottle of bacta again.  Snoke would not like it.

He took the bottle.

—

Rey stepped out of Luke’s cabin, shaken, upset, and tired.  She had stopped crying finally.  She stepped out to look up at the sky.  Obi-Wan had faded hours ago.  Luke had gone to bed.  Anakin had stayed with her.  He stepped outside with her.  Dawn passed its tongue over the knife-edge of the horizon.

“There has to be another way,” she said.

He didn’t answer.  He put his hand on her shoulder.  It had no weight.  It passed through her clothes and tingled on her skin.

“I know Obi-Wan didn’t like it,” said Anakin, “but I think Luke’s right.  Kylo Ren’s been given the mandate to kill the last Jedi.  He can’t be allowed to succeed.  Not here, not on the same planet as this cave, not for the reasons he’s doing it.  It’ll compound the rift that created the cave.  It’ll leave him wide open to the power of the dark side.  It’s not just Snoke who wants to use him.  There are forces at work more powerful than Snoke could imagine when he started hollowing out Ben Solo to use as his plaything.”

Rey nodded.  The wind picked up and blew her hair across her lips.  She tucked it behind her ear.

“I don’t think I can kill him,” she said.

“You’re strong enough.  It won’t break you.  Leave the rest to us.”

Rey looked up at the young man’s face.  He had no doubt.

“You remind me of Ben,” she said.

He laughed.  “I’m not sure how to take that!”

“It’s a good thing.  I guess.”

“Well, thank you then, _I guess_.  You remind me of someone too.  But, uh, I probably shouldn’t say.”

“Is it a good thing?”

“Yes,” he said quietly, full of a longing Rey was shocked she recognized.  Except for his size, she hadn’t caught the family resemblance.  But when he ached, when his lips parted and his eyebrows crept up and he thought of her, he looked like him.

Rey felt her face flush.  She looked at the horizon.  He pointed.

Rey followed his finger and saw a faint speck of light on the horizon, way off to her left, toward the north.  It grew, steadily.  It streaked across the sky, the telltale trail of an incoming ship burning behind it in the atmosphere.

All she felt was dread.

“What is coming?” she said.  She looked over at Anakin.  “Possibility, right?” she hazarded.  

He gave her a bittersweet smile.

“There’s another one,” he said.  He pointed at the other end of the horizon, to her right.

“What do I do?”

“You’ll know.  I have faith in you.  Just take care of them for me, will you?  I’d feel better if you did.”  He squinted.  He thought.  “Actually, I don’t like that answer.  It’s too Jedi!  It’s pretty annoying.  Go to the ship that lands south first, that’s your best bet.  Got it?  And maybe get going now.  It’s all gonna go down quick.”

Rey stiffened.  She looked at his face for reassurance, but he winked out of existence and was gone just like that.

Rey looked up at the stars to find the southward sky, at the two ships hurtling toward her.  The lighter of the two ships was southwards, and she ran in its direction.


	8. Chapter 8

Rey ran down the jagged rocks southward, glancing upwards at the sky toward the incoming ship.  It was an x-wing, and faintly she felt her friend aboard it.   Rey’s ankles bounced off the rocks as she slid more than ran, down the steep hillside until and finally could no longer find purchase.  She leaned back into the hillside and let gravity take her.  She slid downwards, down the jagged moss-covered rocks, and landed on the beach, the backs of her arms and legs burned, she grit her teeth and leaned forward, panting, as the x-wing touched down on the rocky shore.

R2-D2 was in the co-pilot position of the x-wing, chattering in half-obscene binary.  The gist of it was _He’s a terrible pilot! I had to do it myself!  Can you imagine!?  He could have killed us!_

The windscreen slid back and Finn leaned out over the edge of the x-wing.

“Rey!” he said.  Rey huffed and stumbled closer to the craft.  Finn climbed out over the wing of the craft and eyed the jump down.

“Wait, I need you to get out of here!” she said.

“What?”

“You need to get off the planet!”

“But… I had to steal this thing!  Leia wouldn’t let me come.  Everyone’s going to be mad.”

Finn jumped down.  Rey winced and bore her teeth in frustration.

“How’d you get R2 to come?” she said.

“You were in trouble,” said Finn.  “We had to.”

 _Luke is in trouble,_ whirred R2.

“Uh huh,” said Rey.

Finn spotted the backs of Rey’s arms, which were bright green from the mossy rocks where the skin was intact and wet bloody red where the skin rubbed through.  He knelt in front of her, wrapped his arms around her torso and pulled her into a great hug.  Rey held her arms out to her side and winced.

“Are you OK?  Is Luke OK?”

“There’s another ship coming.  I need you to go tell Luke it’s time, and I need you to stay in his shack, OK?  I don’t want you to see this.  He’s coming.”

“Wait, who?”

“Kylo Ren, OK?”

“WHAT,” said Finn.  He pulled back.  He looked into her eyes.  “No way are you fighting him alone.  No way.  We’ll face him together.”

Finn’s hands on her ribs shook, but his eyes were full of an earnest conviction.  Rey shook her head, pleading.

“Please, just go.  If you can’t do what I’m asking, just leave,” said Rey.

Finn looked hurt.  Beyond hurt.  Rey thought of what she had to do, of anything happening to Finn, of Finn seeing it and how he’d look at her.  She buried her head in his chest, clutched his jacket, and started to sob.  He wrapped his arms around her.  She clutched him.

“I missed you,” she said.

He nodded.  “We can leave together,” he ventured.

R2-D2, still docked in the x-wing, whirred in less-than-polite tones that there is no human co-pilot’s chair on the x-wing.

“This is touching,” they heard; a distorted bass purr.

Finn froze in Rey’s arms.  Rey’s breath caught in her chest, then against her will, it started heaving.  The whole universe echoed in his voice.  His voice.  That voice.

She willed herself to turn her head.  Kylo Ren stood, mask on, blaster pointed at them.

Rey ventured, “Y— you don’t have your saber.”

“I have no need of it where we’re going,” he said.  He turned his head to Finn.  “It’s your final test, traitor.”

“W-why didn’t you go to Luke first?” said Rey.

He ignored her.  He gestured to Finn again.  “Let go of the girl.”

Finn started to comply, reluctantly.  Rey held on to Finn.  She turned her body in front of Finn’s, staring at Kylo Ren over her shoulder.  Rey felt him pull the saber off her belt.  She winced.

“You won’t shoot me,” she said.

Finn flinched.  He caught eye contact with Rey, begging to find something in her gaze which would explain what was happening.  She couldn’t give it to him.  She stared down Kylo Ren, defiant.

Kylo Ren tilted his head.  He walked, deliberately up to them, blaster at arm’s length.  Rey felt the barrel press into her shoulder, angled upwards.  The bolt would pass through her shoulder and into Finn’s chest.  His gloved hand ran up Rey’s neck, entwined in her loose hair.  He pulled her head back so she was face to face with his mask.

“I wouldn’t kill _you_ ,” he said.

“I would never forgive you.”

“We’re going to live a long time,” he said.  “You’ll have time to reconsider.”

She knew he believed it.  Rey let Finn go.

“Back up, traitor,” said Kylo Ren.  “Hands up.”

Finn took a step back.  Rey clenched her jaw, bore her teeth.  Ren wrapped his arm around her ribcage, blaster still pointed at her shoulder.  He started dragging her backwards.  She held onto his arms, pulled herself up, kicked at the ground so her boots wouldn’t be dragged off of her.  He pulled her in the direction of his approach.

Toward the cave.

“Follow,” said Kylo Ren.

“Stay there,” said Rey. 

Kylo Ren kept walking and Finn, furious and terrified, obeyed.  

“Where are we going?” she said.

Ren didn’t answer.

“I deserve to know,” she said.  He was unmoved.  Finn looked from Rey to Kylo Ren, questioning.  Rey kept her eyes on him.  Rey heard the cave buzzing, shrieking as they came nearer.  Rey turned her head toward the cliff.

The blackness had metastasized onto the cliffside.  Rey looked back at Finn.  His eyes widened.  He saw something behind her.  He stopped in his tracks, terrified.  Rey strained against Kylo Ren’s chest, but she couldn’t turn to see.   The pink in Finn’s lips had drained to ashen-gray.  She could see the whites all around his eyes.  She was being dragged toward something she couldn’t see.

Kylo Ren jostled Rey’s shoulder, threatening her to Finn as he kept walking.  Finn didn’t take another step.  Finn, who would die for her.

“Rey…!” Finn said. 

Rey began to panic.

“I— I’ll go with you,” she said.  “I’ll go.  Just let Finn go.  We can just leave,” she said.

“You’d never forgive me,” he said.  “Remember?”

“I don’t want to do this,” she said.

“We could live the life we should have,” he said.  “It can be real.  We just have to give it what it wants.”

Rey started screaming incoherently.  The closest she came to a word was Luke’s name.  It echoed off the cliff and was picked up in a mocking screech by the cave.

“That’s enough, Ben.”

Rey turned her head toward the water.  Rising out of it was Luke.  He had his boots on and his breeches, and something in his right hand.  It was covered in plastic.  He shook the water out of his hair as he unwrapped the item.

“I don’t even have to kill you,” said Kylo Ren.

“Right.  You’re just going to end the universe as we know it,” said Luke.  He freed the lightsaber hilt from the plastic and held it parallel to his chest.

“I _will_ hurt her,” said Kylo Ren.

“I don’t doubt it,” said Luke.

Two things happened at once:  Luke lunged and Kylo Ren fired.

Rey found herself on the ground and screaming before she even felt the pain.  Luke swung the saber and the blaster’s barrel clattered on the rocks before Ren had time to fire again.  Ren jumped backwards, waived his hand in a great arc, and Luke flew back into the water.  Finn ran and vaulted onto Kylo Ren’s back, and Kylo grabbed him, by the thigh and lifted him.

Rey clutched her shoulder and sat up.

“NO,” she shouted.

Rey saw, behind Kylo Ren, up the side of the cliff, the void.  It had flowed down into the water toward the morning sun, up the cliffs, up and up and into the sky.  It reached its greedy fingers to the stars.

Ren hurled Finn into it.  Finn landed like an animal thrown into mud, gasping.  It flowed into his nostrils and over him, over his sweet face, over his eyes.  He was covered, and then whatever hint of a shape she could see silhouetted against the sky sank.

Rey stopped screaming.  Rey heard Ren run over to her.  He sank to his knees.  His shaking fingers felt for the release on his mask.  He pulled it off and cast it aside.

“What did you do?” she said.

“He’s not dead,” he said.  He glanced down at her shoulder.  “It won’t hurt for long.”  He looked into her eyes.  He looked relieved.

Rey blinked.  “What did you—“

The void heaved suddenly, and faster than Rey could scream it was in her mouth, drowning her.


	9. Chapter 9

Rey blinked.  The very center of her vision filled in first, dimly, slowly.  She was in a long hallway with a door at the end, and her steps echoed against the tall orange marble pillars that lined the sides and bright white lighting panels between them.  No windows.

She heard the loud hum of a thousand voices murmuring.   Her vision swayed.  She was walking but she could not feel her legs or any other body-sense that told her she was on her feet rather than falling Her shoulder did not hurt.  She felt something constricting her neck and clinging to her ribs.  Her face felt as if it were covered in grease.  Her hair tugged on her scalp.

There were people with her.  She could see them from the corner of her eye, but could not turn her head.  She did not have control of it.

Control started with her eyes and started moving downward, down her face.  It spread down her face, down her chest.  Her breath caught in her chest a moment as she gained control of her abdomen.

 Her shoes were odd, high in the back.  As control crept down her knees her feet started to wobble under her.  She tripped on the fabric of her dress.

“My lady!” said a young woman’s voice.  A slight figure in a black hooded robe knelt beside her and started fussing with the hem of the gown Rey was wearing.  The garment was black and heavy.

“I’m— I’m—“ said Rey.

There were stormtroopers with her.  Half a dozen in white, and two in red behind her.  Rey’s mouth opened.  She looked down at the clocked figure.  The young woman turned her face up to Rey.

For a moment it was like looking in a mirror.  A worried mirror.

“Are you all right, my lady?”

The girl’s nose was perhaps a little wider.  Her teeth were a different shape than Rey’s own when she spoke.

“It is a very heavy dress, Betora,” said a familiar voice.  Rey froze.

“My lady has worn heavier,” said the girl fiercely.

“I meant no insult,” he said.  He crouched in front of Rey.  He rested his wrists on his knees.  Rey worked her gaze upwards.

Ben’s smooth face looked back at her.  She looked into his eyes. 

“I simply meant,” he continued, “it would be unfair to impose limitations on the Empress’s dress when himself Palpatine forewent pageantry.  Do you agree, highness?”

He raised his eyebrows at her.  Rey slowly nodded.

He offered her his hand.  She wet her lips and tentatively gripped it.  He hauled her upwards as he stood.  She pulled her muscles in to steady herself.  She felt strangely weak.  She thought of taking another step, and how she would fall again.

“Those shoes were tight, weren’t they?” Ben said.  He looked at her face.

Rey thought.

The handmaiden took apparently personal offense to this.  “Senator—“ she started.

“No, uh.  They are,” lied Rey.

“M-my lady!”

“The Senate floor is clean,” sad Ben. “She can remove them.”

The handmaiden started tearing up.

“I, uh, don’t doubt your professionalism B-Betora,” hazarded Rey.

That seemed to appease her a little.  She was still very unhappy.

An old man with a bald head and pointed beard cleared his throat.

“The senate serves at your pleasure, my lady,” he said.  “However….”

“Vice-chancellor Orenfo is correct,” said Ben.  “As he often is.  Off with the shoes.  Let’s go.”

Betora, to Rey’s shock, sank to her hands and knees and lifted the front of Rey’s dress.  She tapped Rey on the heel, and Rey lifted her foot.  Rey looked up at Ben, who smirked at her.

She felt like Ben wasn’t the kind of man who smirked.  She swallowed.  Betora had her lift the other foot and pried the shoe off.  Betora crawled backward out from under the tent of fabric, shoes in hand.

“Oh, now the hem is the wrong height!” Betora said.

“Cannot be helped,” said Ben.  “We have a Senate to open.”

“I was never very good at this,” said Rey pointedly.

Ben’s eyes narrowed.  “I’m sure once we get through those doors,” he pointed, “it will all come back to you.”

He held his arm out to her.  His lip curled.  It was not a kind man’s smile.

Rey sucked on the inside of her lips and took his arm.  They started walking.  Ben’s pace was swift.  The others— the stormtroopers, the handmaiden, the vice-chancellor— did not walk so fast.  They were soon quite a ways behind them in the long hallway.

“You have to give a short speech,” he murmured.

“I don’t know any.”

“Your notes are in my breast pocket.  I’m very thoughtful.”

Rey chuffed.

“I could run now,” she whispered.

He down at her.  He met her gaze.  He looked her up and down, considering how to answer.

“Not in that gown,” he said.  “And I think not in front of all these people.  We’ll have a chance to talk soon after.  You’ll have to change for dinner.  We’ll make excuses you aren’t feeling well and leave early from that.  I strongly suggest you focus on passing.”

“This isn’t funny.  This doesn’t change anything.  We’ll be right back where we were soon.”

He smiled.  He gripped her arm, his fingers twitched.  Impulsively, he bent and kissed her on the cheek.  The vice-chancellor coughed.  Rey and Kylo Ren each glanced behind him.  The handmaiden was and the chancellor were each frowning.  Orenfo’s look was intense disapproval, and Betora’s was bewilderment.

“You don’t pass either,” murmured Rey to Ren.

She heard him swallow.

They passed under the great stone archway of the Senate with its polished brass doorway.  She could smell the brass.  She had spent hours polishing dust off metal, and oiled brass was unmistakable.  The doors were as tall as four men standing on one another’s shoulders.  Three troopers on each side waited to push them closed.

The Senate was a bowl-shaped odium with round floating pods with two or three people each lining the walls in a pleasing spiral.  A grand staircase ran from the door to the bottom.  Halfway down the wide stair was a docking platform, and waiting for them was a docked pod, shining silver.  The ones which lined the walls of the Senate were shiny and black.

Not all were filled.  Perhaps one in five were empty.

As the Senators saw her, the dull roar of a thousand Senators and their aides whispering fell off to an eerie silence as all senators and aides stood.  Every face turned to her.

Rey tried to keep her eyes forward.  She assumed an Empress would not gawk at her subjects.  But from what she saw from staring straight in front of her, she’d yet to spot a non-human face.  Humans were by far the most wide-flung race, by far the most common.

But this was the Senate.

Rey stepped onto the pod.  There was a podium in the middle.  The red troopers flanked her.  Betora and Orenfo stood in front of the plush seats that lined the rim of the pod while Ren walked her to the podium.  Rey gripped the edge of it as the pod cruised to the middle of the Senate.  Ren pulled the notes from his breast pocket.  He indicated the microphone and set them in her hands before taking a step back.

Rey looked at her notes.  The hand they were scrawled in was spidery and angular.

“Senators, my loyal subjects.  Please be seated.”

The notes instructed her to wait until everyone was seated.

Ren sat first, behind her and to her left.  She cast her eyes around the room, looking for non-humans.  Not even a Twi'lek.  She heard Ren clear his throat behind her.  She looked at her notes and spoke carefully into the microphone.

“Today,” she said.  She flinched when she heard her voice echo out of the walls.  She started again. “Today is the third anniversary of my ascension, and the seventh year since the untimely death of our most beloved Emperor.  And yet, in the face of hardship, the Empire and the spirit of its people are indomitable.”

Rey paused, disgusted.  The Senators took it as an opportunity for applause.  Rey took a breath, and they stopped, almost all at once.  Her hands shook.

“Some may ask why the Rebellion has not yet been crushed.  The First and Second Deathstars were destroyed before my birth.  Tens of thousands died, millions more have died since.  The war wages on.  The spirit of chaos, of disorder, are part of sentient life.  Pestilence longs to plague the healthy vine, the weak longs to consume the strong.  It is natural.  It is natural for parasites to hollow out their hosts, to thrive on the strength other beasts arrive at by their own work and talent.  And it is also natural for the strong to triumph despite the resentment of the weak, to crush the parasites which would feed on them.

I heave heard calls for ‘reform’—”

Rey was cut off by open hissing.  Ren, behind her, held up a hand, and the crowd quieted.

“I have heard calls for ‘reform.’  For a Senate run by the will of the many.   I have looked into the character of those making the calls.  Some of you will note the absence of your peers,” said Rey.  She glanced up at the empty pods.  A few Senators glanced themselves.  Not all did.

“Those who would hollow out the Empire, reform it, use its strength for their own ends, turn its Empress into a puppet have been—“  Rey opened her mouth.  She closed her eyes.  “— have been crushed as parasites to the Empire, for its good.  Their bodies will not be made available to their families for burial.”

Rey was aware of the tone of her voice.  She was outside of herself.  She could not tell if she was far away, outside of her body, or tired, or what.  She was being stared at and knew she was not saying these things as she was meant to.

She added, “Their betrayal pains me.  I have done what is necessary.”

She looked down at her notes, at the last line.

“May the Force be with you,” she said.

Ren stood and helped her to the seat behind her. 

Ren leaned over.  “Very good,” he said.  Rey couldn’t feel her lips.

Betora slid over on the bench.

“My lady?” she said.

“I am fine,” lied Rey.

“The Empress is fatigued,” said Ren.  “My grandfather’s ill health wears on her. I think it would be best if we took dinner in our chambers. Orenfo, would you make our apologies?”

Orenfo inclined his head.  “If my lady wishes.”

“No, it won’t do,” said Betora.  She glared at them.

“Well, she won’t be going,” said Ren.

Betora looked at him like he was crazy.  “ **I** will,” she said, stating the obvious.

“Stop,” said Rey.  “Both of you.”

Betora looked chastened.  Ren’s head snapped around to look at Rey.  Rey looked from Betora to Orenfo for their reaction.  They stared at Ren, eyebrows raised.

“We are both very fatigued from Anakin’s ill health,” said Rey.

“Anakin?” said Orenfo.

“Lord Vader,” snapped Ren.

“Very fatigued,” repeated Rey.

The pod floated back to the docking point.  Rey stood and started walking without any regard for anything.  Not the handmaiden or the assistant-Chancellor’s dirty looks, not the murmuring of the Senate, not the stormtroopers and their military choreography she was obviously messing up.  Not Ren and his nonsense.  She hitched up the heavy dress and walked as fast as she could.  Ren took a couple of quick steps and caught up with her.

“I’m going to my chambers,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. He held his elbow out.  She ignored him.  He finally slid his arm under her elbow.  She held it closer to her body.  He still forced it in, but she knew he looked strange doing it to a thousand pairs of eyes.

“I know the way,” he hissed.

Rey nodded.  She let him lead her.

—

Finn woke up in uniform, standing outside of a door at attention, looking straight forward through a trooper mask.  He felt the pinch of his armor on his thighs before he could move.  He looked down at his rifle, at the serial number on it.  FN-2187.

He’d had bad dreams of being back in uniform, and this was one of them.  He wondered when he’d fallen asleep.  Maybe on the way to Ach-To.  That had not been real.  It could not have been.  Kylo Ren and Rey did not know one another, they were enemies. Luke Skywalker hadn’t climbed out of the ocean in his underwear and attacked Kylo Ren.  Rey hadn’t been shot.   No giant black thing had eaten him.

Finn just had to wait and he’d wake up.

He did not recognize the hall he was in, was not sure if he knew the trooper who stood on the opposite side of the door they were guarding.  A light on the panel beside him started flashing.  The other trooper sighed.

“Your turn,” he said.

“Huh?”

The trooper titled his head at the panel to indicate it.  “It’s sixteen-hundred.”

“Ah,” said Finn.  He thought frantically about his time on guard duty, what happened at sixteen-hundred.  His duties came as natural as breathing, he’d done them so many times.  Everyone had an absent moment, of course.  But it was his job to do something at sixteen-hundred, and he didn’t have the first clue.

He thought of explaining this nightmare to Rey.  He’d drilled over and over and over again.  He knew his job.  He did it, he knew his place in the world.  He thought of explaining it to anyone, the idea they might not understand on a bone-level the terror of having a purpose in life, something he’d worked and drilled for, and then dreaming about not knowing how to be a soldier.

He clutched his rifle.

“You waiting for something?” said the other guard.

“Uh…” Finn searched for a good answer.  He failed to find one.  “Yes?”

“I’ll send Senator Solo in if he comes by.  No need to delay for him.  Go ahead.”

The trooper hit the panel.  The door slid open.  Finn fled into the dark, red-lit room.  The door shut behind him.  He leaned back against it and breathed.  It was dark and misty and he could hardly see, and quiet except for a faint mechanical whirring.  There wasn’t anything on the walls.  No windows.  There was a bed and maybe something very white in it.  Finn squinted.  He pulled his helmet off to see better.

It was definitely a humanoid, it had that skull shape. Finn hadn’t seen a human with flesh quite so pale or lumpy.  It was covered by a blanket up across its chest.  Its chest heaved.

“Hello?” he said.

It blinked.  It glanced sideways at him.

“Do you know where you are?” it said.

“O-of course,” said Finn.

The figure blinked slowly.  It looked back at the ceiling.

“Do you?” said Finn.

The creature started writhing upwards in the bed and wheezing, grimacing as it moved.  Finn stepped forward.  The blanket fell off the creature’s chest.  There were nasty, bloody tears down its ribcage like claw marks.  It didn’t have arms, really, just stumps.  One below the shoulder, one below the elbow.  Finn dropped his helmet, it clattered.

“Holy— are you OK?”

It glared at him.  It had worked its way to sitting up and was trying to catch its breath.  Finn looked frantically around the room until he spotted a bottle of bacta, sterile gauze, and gloves.

“Hold on,” he said.  He pulled off his trooper gloves and shoved his hands into the medical gloves.  He opened the bottle of bacta and wet the rag.  He knelt by the bed and started patting at the creature’s side with the bacta. The creature’s wounds slowly started to heal.

“Are you a prisoner here?” said Finn.  Finn glanced up at its face.  The creature considered the question.

“Yes,” it said finally.

“Well, uh, I don’t know how to help you,” said Finn,  “but we’ll figure it out.”

“It’s too late for me,” it said.  It started coughing.  The wound Finn was working on re-opened.  Finn cringed.

“No,” said Finn. “You’re gonna be fine.”  

He didn’t know if it was true or not, but he’d never tell a wounded person they weren’t going to make it.

“I may be able to help you,” it said.  It tried to sit further up.  Finn put his hand on its chest to press it back down into the pillow.

“You just stay put,” said Finn.

The room lurched and his knee hit something.  He fell.  He was across the room from where he was.  He rolled over onto his back and clutched his knee.  The bottle of bacta was on the floor by the bed.  He still had the rag in hand.   Something thick dripped down his ear.  He winced.  He’d clipped his ear on the chest of drawers before hitting the wall, and it stung.  He held it with the bacta soaked rag and leaned against the wall.

“Don’t touch me,” the creature wheezed.

Finn nodded and breathed.  He didn’t look at it.

“I can teach you the ways of the Force,” it said.  “I can teach you who you are.”

Finn ran his tongue over his front teeth and shook his head emphatically.  He still couldn’t look at the thing.  “Nah.  No, I’m good.  I know exactly who I am.  I’m good.”

The room filled with a blue light.  Finn looked up.  There was a very tall human man with fine white features towering above him.  It looked like a very high quality holovid.  In the pit of his stomach, Finn knew it wasn’t one.  He just knew.  The knowledge creeped him out.  He didn’t like being sure.

“Hi,” it said.

Finn was done.  Absolutely done.  He held the rag against his ear and clutched his knee and hoped to die or wake up soon.

“Listen, Finn,” said the young man, “I know you got dragged into this.  It would have been better if you hadn’t.  I tried to stop it.  Anyway, you’re here now.  We’re going to need your help.”

“I don’t know you,” Finn said.  “If you could just kill me or give me a minute?”

“That’s fair.  I know Rey.  She could use your help.”

Finn groaned and sat up a little straighter against the wall.

“Why should I trust you?”

The young man blinked.  He gave Finn a broad, winning smile.  “Gosh,” he said.  “I hadn’t thought of that!”

Finn gaped at him.

—

Rey refused to say anything.  That seemed to frighten Betora and Orenfo, and frightened was better than asking questions.  She put on her fiercest face and kept her mouth shut.  They walked from the Senate through a set of doors that required the red troopers to pass their gloved hands over a pad.  They walked through an area with couches and a fireplace and up a set of stairs.

Orenfo and the troopers took their leave at the chamber door, but Betora followed in.  It was the room from her dream, floor to ceiling windows, stars, and a lovely green planet below.  She hadn’t known she was on a space station.

She stared at the view while Betora rummaged in the closet for something and threw it on the bed.  Betora walked up behind her and started tugging at something.  Rey stiffened until she felt the dress start to loosen.

Ren watched, leaning against the room’s bathroom door.  The dress fell away from her breasts.  Rey looked over her shoulder at Ren, who stared at her.  Of course he did.  Rey looked back at the planet.  Betora cleared her throat.  Rey glanced at the girl.  She looked Rey up and down.

“Your arms, my lady.”

Rey raised them.  Betora pulled the dress up over her head.  Rey crossed her arms over her chest.  Betora threw the dress across the bed and then picked up the white gown she’d retrieved earlier.  Rey raised her arms again and was stuffed into the white knit gown.

“Your pardon, my lady, I must get ready,” said Betora.  She hurried out the chamber door with the heavy black dress over her shoulder.

Rey and Ren both paused and listened.  Rey caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.  Her face was painted white, and her limbs were pale, thin, and unblemished.  Her hair was elaborately braided.

“What did you do, Ren?” said Rey.

“I restored the universe to what it was supposed to be, Rey,” he said.  He drug out the hard consonant of her name unnaturally.  Rey found the pins in her hair and started pulling them out.  He walked up next to her and inspected her hair.  Rey rolled her eyes, but she was too damn tired to protest and didn’t want a physical fight. He felt for the pins in her hair and started pulling them out gently.

“I’m playing along with this long enough to get out.  When I do, I’m going to destroy the cave.  Which is what I would have done if you hadn’t fed it Finn.”

“There’s no getting out.”

“Like hell there isn’t.”

“You went into it repeatedly,” he said.  “You fed it.  You told it what we wanted.  And now it has you, and I, and Luke, and the traitor.  All it wants is to give us what we want.”

“I didn’t want this,” said Rey.  “You wanted this.”

“Am I supposed to apologize?  I’d rather you be an Empress than some slug’s virtual slave?  I’d rather be your servant, in an orderly galaxy than Snoke’s?  Compared to you, Snoke is nothing.”

“I am not that woman,” hissed Rey, gesticulating toward the Senate.  “I do not care if she’s happy.  I don’t care if her husband is sweet and she’s happy.  I’m not her.”

“I know,” he said. “I like you better.  I… I am more familiar with her, but I’m glad you’re here and not her.  She was always Ben's.  I’m glad you're mine.”

“I am not yours,” Rey hissed.  “I’m not _your_ doll.”

“I would give anything to be yours,” he whispered.  “I can’t feel Snoke anymore.  All I feel is you.  All I want to be is you.  I am no one without you.”

Rey turned toward him in shock.  His mouth was open and he was hunched and hungry like he’d confessed his dearest secret.  He was a lonely, screaming pit, and he would swallow her whole if she would only let him.  He would eat her heart raw and they would be together always.

“I’ll do anything you want,” said Ren.  “Please.”

“ _No_ ,” said Rey.

“Please,” he said.  He touched her shoulder.  She smacked his hand and pointed at him, backing up against the wall.  She crossed her arms across her chest.

“You get away from me,” she said.

He stepped back.  He looked away.  His eyes were full of tears.

“Excuse me,” he said.  He walked backward, toward the door.  Rey felt her throat tighten.  Someone would see him.

He would not be all right.

“Wait,” said Rey.

He hit the door panel and stepped outside.


	10. Chapter 10

Rey ran back to the bed and pulled the blanket off of it, wrapping it around herself before hurrying to the panel and smacking it.  The door slid open.  She stuck her head out.  Red storm troopers flanked the door.  They kept their eyes forward.

Ren was stalking through the living area, walking past the formal and spindly sitting furniture.  Rey hadn’t looked closely.  The large portrait over the fireplace was of herself, seated, and Ren in a white military uniform standing behind her.  Each figure was larger than either of them, and their eyes stared straight at Rey.  She tore her gaze away.

“Ben!” she hissed.

He waved his hand behind him at her, dismissing her.

“Ben!” she said.

He turned.  “What?”

“Get back here.”

“Why?”

She glanced at the guards.  “Because I said so?”

He took her meaning.

“You wouldn’t,” he said.  He unballed one of his fists, cracked the knuckles.  He held it rigid, claw-like, fingers tense.  Rey saw a blue spark arc across his fingertips.  Rey glanced at her guards.  They weren’t looking at him yet.

“Please,” Rey said.

“Please what?”

“Please come back in.”

“Why?”

“We’ll talk.”

“What is there to talk about?”

Rey jerked her finger at one of the guards and pressed her lips together exaggeratedly.

“Madam?”  The guard said.  Rey started.  It was a woman’s low voice.  It was odd to think of it as being a person with traits rather than very dangerous decoration.

“Uh, sorry,” said Rey.  “You know how men are.”

“No, madam.”

“Oh,” said Rey.  “It’s, uh, married things.  Private married things.” She looked over at Ren, pleading.  She fiddled with her wedding band conspicuously.  Ren rolled his eyes.  He pulled his surcoat straight.

“Fine,” he said to the room.  “ _Fine_.”

Rey stepped back to let Ren in.  He rounded the corner and kept walking, pacing back and forth furiously.

“You’re going to get us killed,” said Rey.

“ _You’re_ not in any danger.  You’re the Empress.”

“ _No_.  I’m not.  That’s a problem.  I don’t know how to get dressed right.  I don’t talk right.  I don’t know what’s happened.  I don’t know anything about this place. They’re not going to just assume I’m the Empress if I keep messing up.  They’ll think I’m a double like Betora something.”

This had clearly not occurred to him.  His pacing slowed and soon stopped.

“History is largely unchanged,” Ren said.  “Lord Vader killed Luke and captured Leia not long after.  After a few years Palpatine set up a new puppet Senate with her as figurehead using Ben as a hostage.”

“Is she alive?”

“No.  Ben got older and she became confident they wouldn’t kill him once he developed a close relationship with Vader.  She was killed attempting to escape.”

“Do I know my parents?”

Ren shrugged.  “Not well.  They’re just merchants.  You were just a prodigy.  You were noticed and offered to the Emperor as tribute.”

Rey ran her hand over her mouth.  “They were well off?”

“As far as I know.”

“If they were—“  Rey stopped herself.  She stared at the planet.  “Why did they leave me?”

“They didn’t,” he said.

Rey bit her lip and rolled her eyes.  Her limbs started to shake and she sat on the edge of the bed so she wouldn’t have the humiliation of tripping again.

Ren tilted his head at her.  “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Ren approached cautiously.  He sat on the edge of the bed out of her reach.  Rey’s mouth curled in barely hidden disgust as she tried not to cry.

“They shouldn’t have left you,” said Ren.  Rey tightened her lips and winced.  A tear escaped despite her.  She wiped it away with her knuckle, then hissed in annoyance as she smeared the white grease makeup into her eye.  She rubbed it, irritated.

“Honestly, don’t,” she said.  “I don’t believe you understand.”

“I’ve been through similar,” he said.

“Oh, like hell you have,” she said.  Kylo Ren crossed his arms.

“I was sent away when I was eleven,” he said quietly.

“To people who loved you,” said Rey.  “It’s different.  Even if you didn’t get along, it’s different.”

“I’m trying to be sympathetic.”

“Because you think I’ll just be thrilled with this situation if you tell me how I feel, right?  Whether it’s even plausible?”

“What am I supposed to do to make you happy!?”

“You _shot_ me.  You _murdered_ Han.  I don’t believe for one second you care about my happiness. ”

Kylo Ren stood.  He stomped in front of her like a giant, murderous toddler.  He pointed at her, accusing.  “I did _this_ for _you_ ,” he snarled.

“No, you did this for _you_.   You don’t have any idea who you are or who I am.  You don’t know the difference.  You’ve got a costume and your grandpa.  If he didn’t wear black you wouldn’t know what your favorite color is.  So you just assume if you want something, I want it.  You’d feel this way about Finn if he beat you.  You’ve never even asked what I wanted.  Never occurred to you.”  

Ren stared at her.  He opened his mouth to say something.  No sound came out.  Rey’s temper caught up with her mouth. She added, angrier, “and if you don’t get your finger out of my face, I will _bite_ it off.”

Kylo Ren sank to his knees in front of her.  He held his hands up to touch them, then drew them back.  He stared at her knees.

“What do you want?” he said.

“I don’t know, and if I did I wouldn’t have to tell you,” said Rey.

Ren took a few breaths.  He looked tired.

“I love you,” he said.

“No, you don’t.  You don’t know me.  You don’t know you.”

He looked strangely calm as he thought about this.

“I want to love you,” he ventured.  “I want—“ he looked up at her, then away.  “I want to be the kind of person who— who— you are talented.  You are admirable.  I feel— there is a version of myself who loves you, unselfishly.  Who knows you.  Who knows who he is and who you are.  If I were that man, I would be happy.”

Rey swallowed.  She felt sick.

“I want to go home,” she said.

“Jakku?”

“I don’t know.  It’s not here,”  Rey rubbed her face.  She got more paint in her eye.  “Ow. damn it all!” she said.  She threw herself backward on the bed.

“Stop rubbing,” said Ren.

“I’m not doing it on purpose.  I haven’t slept in a day.”

Ren stood and walked to a little door opposite the one they entered.  She heard running water.  He returned with a wet, soapy washcloth.

“Up,” he ordered.  

Rey rolled her eyes, sat up, and held her hand out for the cloth.  He either ignored her or didn’t notice.  He started dabbing at her face with the cloth.  She shut her eyes tight.  He started dabbing gently at them.

“Ugh.  I can do it myself,” she said.

“Stop whining,” he said.

“I’m—“ she stopped herself before she could say ’not.’  She _was_ whining.  She bit her lips between her teeth.  “I’m not going to like you just because you’re trying to be nice.”

“It doesn’t matter what I do.”

“Nope.”

“Then let me do it and be quiet.”

Rey relaxed.  She was half asleep while he wiped the makeup away from her eyes.  He started across her forehead and her cheeks, across her hairline.  Her eyes opened to nearly unseeing slits.  She swayed with his motion as he dabbed at her.  He leaned down, into her face, looking at his handiwork.  He frowned.

“Lie down,” he said.

“No,” she muttered.

“You don’t want to sleep?” he said, incredulous.

“No,” she said.

“You’re just saying ‘no’ to say it.”

She groaned.  He lifted her legs over the edge of the bed and pulled the blanket out from under her.  Rey was asleep before he’d pulled the blanket up around her shoulders.

Rey did not dream.

—

The blue figure had sat next to Finn on the ground.  Of course it did.  Sure.

“So you’re dead,” said Finn.

“Right.”

“And you’re him,” said Finn, pointing at the figure on the bed.

“ _Mostly_.  We disagree on some things at this point.”

The figure huffed.

“And he’s Darth Vader.”

“Yes.”

“Darth.   _Vader_ ,” Finn repeated.  “The infamous genocidal politician.   _That_ Darth Vader.”

The young man smiled in a way Finn was not sure was genuine.  “Sorry!  You can call me Anakin if that’s easier.”

Finn rolled his eyes.  If both of these people were Darth Vader, he was Mon Mothma.  It was completely absurd.  However, he was not waking up and there was nothing else to do.  He decided to go over the other ridiculous things the weird dream-liar-ghost-thing had told him.

“We’re in a different galaxy?” he said.

“Universe.  Mostly.  Technically galaxy.  Anyway, the important thing is you’re inside of a parasite.”

“A parasite on the universe?”

“A parasite on the Force which is the same thing as the universe.  Mostly. Right.”

“So is this universe we’re in now is a parasite on the Force?”

“… Yes.  That’s close enough.  It’s more like it’s an entity that uses this weak universe as like… its stomach?”

“And we’re in it?”

“Right.”

“So are we going to die?”

“I mean, eventually, everyone dies.  You’ll pretty much live a normal life from your point of view.  It’ll just use you and the others who are strong in the Force as fuel and consume as much of the Universe as it can.  The Universe is pretty big, though.”

“ _I’m_ strong in the Force or whatever?”

“Yes.”

“Like a Jedi.”

“Yes.”

“Like in fairy tales.”

“Sure.”

Finn thought.  “So if we break out, this place will stop existing.”

“If you can, it will probably collapse.  Yeah.”  

Anakin seemed pleasant but bored.  Finn wished Anakin seemed more concerned with being reassuring.

“Will that kill everyone here?”

“They’ll never have existed which isn’t the same.  I think the people here still wouldn’t like the idea.  Pretty hard to explain the difference.  Once they’re gone it won’t matter.”

“Yeah,” said Finn.  “Sure.  So like, what’s the right thing?”

“The right thing?”

“Yeah.  The right thing.  The moral thing.”

“Huh.  I’m not sure I’m the right guy for that question!”  Anakin seemed to find this funny.  Finn didn’t like that.  “Anyway, you’ll be used like an object for the rest of your life, and when enough of you die this place will collapse in on itself along with any part of the universe we came from which it ate.  So more people will have never existed the longer you let it go.”

“That’s bad,” said Finn.

“That’s really bad.”

“And you Jedi, like, had people go into this cave thing on purpose?” said Finn, skeptical.

Anakin held his hands up at Finn. “I didn’t have anything to do with that decision.  I had problems with it.”

“You had problems?  You’re _Darth Vader_ , and you had _problems_ with it?”

“Yes,” said Anakin brightly.

Finn sighed.  “So what do we do?”

“Well, I’d say find Luke.  Luke was pretty key to fixing this originally.  But he,” Anakin indicated Vader with a lazy backhanded wave, “killed him in this universe.  There’s no body for him to inhabit.  I honestly don’t know if he exists in either universe anymore.”

Finn blinked slowly.

“Look, what do I do?” he said.

“Me and him talked it over,” said Anakin, jerking his head toward Darth Vader.  “I think we have a pretty solid plan.  See, I’m only here because he and I—”

“Bring Kylo Ren to me,” interrupted Vader.  Anakin’s face flashed in brief, intense anger at the interruption, but he just as quickly brought it under control.  He smiled.  He nodded at Finn.

“Yeah.  Do that,” said Anakin.

“Uh huh,” said Finn wearily.  “How do I do that?”

“You’re on board?  You’ll do it?”

Finn stood slowly, stretching out his knee as he slid up the wall.  He felt his ear.  It was covered in thick blood and bacta slime, but it didn’t hurt anymore.

“If I don’t wake up soon I’m going to be pretty mad,” said Finn.  “But just in case I don’t, I think I better start getting myself out of this mess.”

—

Anakin faded.  Vader asked Finn to lift the plastic mask off the bed and put it over his face. Vader talked for a while.  Finn listened.  

Finally, when Finn thought he had it all down, Finn shoved his helmet on and opened the chamber door.  Mist poured out into the hall.  He poked his head out at the other trooper.

“What took you so long?” the trooper said.

“Uh, sorry.  Listen, could you come here a sec?”

“Someone should be on the door.”

“More firmly,” said Vader.  “Clear your mind.”

Finn cleared his throat.  “Come here,” said Finn.

The trooper stared at him.  He turned and walked through the door.  It shut behind him.

“Give me your rifle,” said Finn.  The trooper held it out, as if for inspection.  Finn swallowed and took it.  He placed it gingerly on the floor.

Finn looked back at Vader.

“What, uh, now?” he said.

The old man’s eyelids fluttered.  His whites showed as he rolled his eyes back in his head.

The trooper crumpled suddenly to the ground.

“HEY,” said Finn.  He pulled the trooper’s helmet off.  Finn didn’t recognize him, but he knew from the man’s face that he was very dead.

“That _wasn’t_ necessary!” said Finn.

“Enough,” growled the old man.  “Bring Kylo Ren to me.”

“I’m not obeying you because you scare me, so cut that crap out.”

“Don’t tell me I don’t frighten you, boy.”

“ _Yeah_ , you frighten me,” said Finn.  “Do I look _nuts_ to you?  I’m _done_ with obeying people because I’m scared.  I’m not here for that.  You do whatever you want, it’s not going to change me and it’s not going to change your situation.”

“All I want is to die,” the old man spat.  “That talkative idiot convinced me to wait for our grandson so I might accomplish something.  Get out before I change my mind.”

Finn took the maniac’s advice.  He took his rifle and fled out the door.  He took the first right.  He remembered to stop running before he saw anyone else in the hall.

He took the first right, toward the kitchens, as Vader had told him to.


	11. Chapter 11

Rey heard soft electronic chiming and shifted.  She heard her own breath hiss out of her nose as she stretched.  She remembered suddenly that Kylo Ren was in the room and startled, eyes open wide, looking around the bed.

He was nowhere to be seen.

The noise was coming from a panel on the door.

“C-come in?” she ventured.

The door continued its soft electronic chime.  Rey pulled the covers down, slid to the edge of the bed, and dangled her feet off.

The ball of her foot hit something, heard a sharp intake of breath.  She scrambled backward on the mattress.  Kylo Ren sat up, rubbing his face.

“I— “ she almost apologized.  She stopped herself.

“What is it?” he said.

“Is that the door?”

He nodded as he rubbed his face.

“I don’t know what to do with it,” she said.

Ren walked across the room to the door panel.  He pressed a button.

“Yes?” he said.

There was a pause.  The voice on the other end cleared its throat.  “Dinner, your highness.”

Ren frowned.  He glanced back at Rey.  Rey heard what he did. She saw something dangerous in how he held his shoulders.

“Don’t,” she hissed at Kylo.

He looked back at the door.  He pressed the button on the com again.

“Give it to the guard.”

There was another pause.

“Come again, sir?”

Rey stiffened.  It was Finn’s voice, without a doubt.

“Hand it off to the guard and then be on your way,” said Ren.

“Sir,” said Finn.

Ren stood for a minute.  He breathed, and Rey breathed.  He finally opened the door and pulled a cart with domed plates of food into the room.

“Sir?”

“We are tired,” said Ren. “We will be indisposed until late morning.”  He pressed the button on the panel and shut the door.

“You should have let him in,” said Rey.

Ren scoffed.  He started lifting the plates until he found a scrap of paper.  He crumpled it in his fist without looking at it.

“HEY,” said Rey.  She stood and marched to him, fingers balled.  She stood chest to chest with him.  He lifted his chin and looked down through his eyelashes at her.

“Let me have it.”

“FN-2187 was a gifted marksman.  Top of his class at the academy.  Loyal to the First Order.  Not well loved, but a leader.”

“I know he was a storm trooper.”

“Not just a storm trooper.  He could have been the best of us.  He betrayed us.  You shouldn’t trust him.”

“‘The best of us.’  Everything you said about him your family could say about you.”

Kylo Ren didn’t reply.  He stared at her down through his eyelashes.

“I would like to kiss you,” he said.

“What?”

“This might not be the best time.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I thought I’d try asking you what you want.”

Rey laughed, incredulous.  “You’re keeping my friend from talking to me.”

He grabbed her hand and shoved the note in it before turning to the cart and pulling the domes off the food.  He took a plate and stalked over to the chair by the dressing table.  Rey blinked.  He cut angrily at the meat on his plate.

Rey looked down at the crumpled note in her hand, and then at him.

“This isn’t going to trick me,” she said.  He glanced at her, put a bite of meat in his mouth, dragged his teeth across the fork tines.  Rey swallowed.  She unfolded the note.  Rey frowned.

“He wants us to move Vader up here in the morning.”

“Absolutely not.”

“He says Vader wants it too.”

Ren stood, knocking the chair over.  He still had his fork in his fist.

“Let me see that.”

“There’s nothing more to it,” she lied.

He snatched the note from her.  He read it twice, three times.  He shot her a dirty look for leaving out what was hidden behind the portrait in the living room.  He stared at the room to the common area, thinking.

“Vader is here?” said Rey.  She hoped he would be distracted by the mention of Vader.  He was.

“Yes.”

“Why haven’t you visited him?”

“I’ve been with you,” said Ren.  Something was off with his tone.  He was lying, she realized.  He dropped the note and wandered back to his plate.  “You should eat.”

Rey pulled the cart over to the bed.  She lifted the dome off the plate.

It was a lot of food.  She didn’t recognize any of it.  Just some meat, some kind of starch.  Something green.  She stared at it.

“What?” he said.

“They just give it here?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I usually have to do something.  Trade something in.  It seems like a trap if they’re giving it to me for free.  Like, a loan or something.  Some kind of Hutt trap.”

Ren sniffed.  “It’s free here.”

“Nothing’s free,” she said.

Rey picked up the fork and knife.  She carefully cut a little piece of meat off.  She smelled it.  Slowly, she put it into her mouth.

It was the best thing she’d ever tasted.  She had no basis for comparison.  Everything had been a disgusting phantom of what food should taste like, and this was the real thing.  Maybe how animals smelled, but good.  Maybe Jakku after the rain, when the desert was carpeted with flowers for a few short hours and earth and fragrant blossoms filled the air so thick she could taste it.   Maybe how Kylo Ren smelled when he sweat, his mouth on hers, his tongue on her tongue.

Rey covered her mouth and swallowed.

“What?” he said.

She shook her head.  Her palm, pressed against her mouth, was not coarse.  She’d had thick callouses on her palms and at the creases where her fingers bent, and they were gone.  They were a part of her, a part of who she was, and she took it for granted they’d been inevitable.

Tears welled up in her eyes and fell down her cheeks.  She put her fork down then pulled her knees up to her chest.  Her nightgown was short and exposed her below the waist.  She heard Kylo stand and make his way over, cautiously.   She wished the bed would suck her in.  She tried not to think of him looking at her, crying and naked below the waist.  She was thinner in the limbs, weaker.  All the little spots on her skin from where the sun had beaten her had vanished.  Every mark and blemish life had left on her to prove she had survived it had vanished.  She had wished for as long as she could be freed from having to be harder than the universe which ground against her skin.

And now had been.  It wasn’t what she hoped for.  She couldn’t bring herself to feel relieved she had food.  All the food she ever wanted, just there.  She couldn’t bring herself to refuse it.  It was everything she wanted, and still she wasn’t happy.  She wondered what was wrong with her.

“I want to go home,” she said.

“I’ll take you there.”

“I don’t even know where it is.”

“I’ll find it.”

“I don’t want your promises.  I don’t want to owe you anything.  I hate you for bringing me here.”

Rey clenched her eyes shut.  He exhaled.  He shifted to step back.

Rey reached out and caught his coat.  She clutched it in her hands. She heard him swallow.

Rey was hungry.  She was tired.  Her head ached.  She opened her eyes slowly.  Ren was pale.  He glanced from her eyes down to her fingers wrapped up in the cloth of his military-style coat.  He looked scared.

Rey held him there and carefully reached her other hand to the coat button near his navel.  She pushed the button through with unfamiliar fingers and their long, hard nails.  Her hand traveled upward to the next button.  As she unbuttoned it, a gap opened in the coat as he breathed.  He had a fine white shirt underneath.

Her hand moved upwards.  As she started on the next button, he put his hand over hers.

“Rey,” he said.

The corners of her mouth turned down, furious.  She bore her teeth at him.  “This is what you want, right?  You don’t even care what I want,” she said.

“You don’t want me,” he said.

“I just want to feel good.  Okay?  I just want something to feel good.”

Kylo Ren bent.  He closed his eyes.  He pressed his forehead against Rey’s.  She waited for him to kiss her.  He knelt on the bed, between her knees, and slowly gathered her up, until he was kneeling on the bed and she was in his lap, clutching him.  Her head rested on her shoulder as she cried.   One of his hands rested on her ribcage, the other on the back of her head.  She quaked and sobbed until she was too tired to keep going.

“Your food is getting cold,” he said.

“They keep it so cold in here,” she said.

“Hm?”

“Really cold.  They keep it cold in spaceships.”

“You’re just used to that hellish ball of sand,” said Kylo Ren.

He slid her from his lap and deposited her back on the bed.  Rey wiped her nose with her arm as she scooted back to lean against the headboard.  Ren pulled the cart closer and pulled the plate off and onto the bed.  Rey grimaced at the food.  He scooped up a fork full of the white starchy stuff.  He took a bite.  He swallowed.

“It’s very good,” he said.  He saw the look on her face.

“I mean, for what it is,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Something that grows in dirt, I’m sure.  You wouldn’t like it.  The meat is disgusting cold, probably.” He cut a small portion of it, took a bite.  He nodded.  He reached for the glass of water on the cart and took a sip, moving his mouth in a very good imitation of disgust.  “Not as bad as I thought,” he said.  “Awful, though.”

He cut another bite.  He held the handle of the fork out to her.  “I’m sure you’ll hate it.  I’m sure you’ve eaten worse, but not much,” he said.

Rey took the fork from him warily.  She slowly brought it up to her mouth.  She took a deep breath and put it in her mouth, her eyes closed.

It was less good cold, but still difficult to bear.  She almost swallowed the bite whole impulsively, to both be rid of it and to have it inside of her more quickly.  She felt her face flush as she chewed and swallowed.

“I can’t believe people just eat this,” she said.

“You deserve it,” he said.

Rey cringed.  “That doesn’t make it better.”

Ren pressed his fists against his knees and looked away.  Rey scooped up a large portion of the white fluffy starch and shoveled it into her mouth to get it over with.  She had to swallow twice to get it in.  The taste lingered.  She panted.

“Oh, wow,” she said.  She rubbed her mouth.  The skin on Kylo Ren’s neck had turned red in patches, as had the tips of his ears.

“You’re very excitable,” he said testily.

“I’ve just never done this before.”

“You’ve _never eaten_?”

“N-not like this.”

“Eat your food,” he snapped.

Rey took another bite of the white stuff.  She tried to keep her face straight as she swallowed.  Some got on the corner of her mouth.  She licked it.  He stared at her.  He pointed at her, looking at her out of the corners of his eyes as his head shook at her.

“ _That_ was on purpose.”

“What?”

“Do not _lie_ to me.”

Rey batted his finger away.

“ _What_ are you talking about?  What, Ren?  One minute you want to kiss me, the next you’re turning me down.  You have this idea of me, you come after me like you’re starving, and the second you have me I’m not what you want.  Then you’re mad at me because you want me again or something.  You don’t treat me like a person.”

“I could say the same thing to you,” he snarled.

Rey launched herself forward at him.  He flinched as if anticipating a strike, hands flew up to his sides to avoid striking her, up like a surrendering man.

Her mouth was on his.  Her arms around his neck.  She felt the muscles of his stomach spasm in shock.  His mouth responded to her, tentative at first.  Rey reached again for his jacket buttons, her hands shaking.  He pulled her hands away and quickly dealt with them.  He shrugged it off.  He pulled away to rid himself of his undershirt.

Ben’s torso was more slight than Kylo Ren’s.  He was muscular from self-care rather than combat, and his skin smooth and unblemished save for the moles and freckles which dotted his arms and shoulders.  Ren pulled her in again and kissed her, lowering her backward.

—

Finn found a supply closet with an unlocked keypad.  Rey was smart.  She’d get the note.

Kylo Ren was a problem, though.  Finn wasn’t sure what he’d do.  He’d gotten the impression from Anakin that Ren had some kind of weird fixation.   He thought of that and how he’d had his arm around her neck as he dragged her on Ach-To, how his fingers had twitched at her shoulders.  He felt sick.

He felt naked in uniform without his rifle, but rifle fire in the Empress’s quarters would have caused a full automatic lockdown.

Finn climbed up one of the tall shelves like a ladder, knocking supplies off.  It wobbled but held.  He pulled one of the light bulbs from the ceiling fixture, then jumped down.  He laid it across the door threshold.

He couldn’t lock it, but he’d hear it if they came in.  He’d have a few seconds to get the drop on whoever it was.  He’d be trapped, screwed, but at least he’d hear it coming.

Finn pulled a shelf away from the wall and crawled behind it and tried to catch at least a few minutes of sleep before morning.

He did not dream.

—

Afterward, Rey ate the rest of her plate, ravenously and without much thought.  Ren showered in the other room.  He came out wrapped in a towel.  She looked him up and down.  His thighs were thinner as well.  She looked down at her own body.  Ren ignored her staring at him.  He finished his own plate of food.

“I’m too thin,” she said after a while.  “I don’t feel like me.”

He nodded.  “I don’t think we'll stay that way long,” he said.  He hit the light switch by the door.

He climbed into bed next to her.  They silently negotiated the distance between their bodies until they settled on his thighs touching the back of hers but space between their torsos.

They did not dream.

—

In his room, Vader concentrated on the body of the officer whose heart he’d crushed with a thought.  The body slid across the floor and under Vader’s bed, followed by the two rifles.  Vader shifted and peered over the side to see how hidden they were.  He used his stump limbs to rearrange his sheets to hang over the edge.  A nurse would be by eventually to help him eat, help him shit, give him pain medication, treat his wounds, suck the fluid out of his lungs.

The body of the trooper would smell, eventually, and they would find it.  They would probably mistake the smell for him— an infection or something more degrading— for a day before they figured it out.  If all went according to plan he would be gone before then.

Vader waited.  He did not sleep.


	12. Chapter 12

Rey drifted into consciousness as the covers beside her lifted and the heat from underneath escaped into the room. Rey turned on her side and pulled the blanket over her shoulder.

She woke again when the bed dipped. He lifted the blanket as he climbed in next to her. Rey groaned in protest as the room’s air played across the back of her arms. Rey shivered.

“It’s just me,” he rumbled.

“It’s cold,” she said.

Ren swallowed. She felt his breath on the back of her neck. Ren scooted closer to her. His arm wrapped around her waist, and his thighs pressed against the back of hers. The skin of his belly was hot. Being in the same bed as another person was uncomfortable. She found herself keeping unnaturally still. The skin of her stomach sweat under his arm. It stuck to his. It was better than being cold.

Rey slept a little longer. She woke when he stretched his shoulder. She waited for more sleep but it didn’t come to her. She opened her eyes. She was facing the chamber’s windows. There were three of them, floor to ceiling, side by side, and oval. When Ren had turned out the lights, it had somehow also dimmed the amount of light the windows let in.

The space station they were on did not orbit the nearby planet, Rey concluded. If they had been close enough to orbit, the planet would have taken up the entire viewport with no visible sky. The sky was visible, as were the stars in them.

The swirling pattern of clouds shrouding the surface of the planet had moved from the night before, but Rey’s careful gaze did not reveal any change from moment to moment. They only moved with time and Rey’s inattention.

Rey took a deep deliberate breath, and she felt him take one as well. As he stretched, he pulled her closer.

His erection pressed against her, the length of it fitting in the crack of her buttocks through the fabric of her nightgown. Rey thought of the previous night. She remembered his face tense and his mouth open and his hips pressed hard into hers. She cleared her throat.

“Are you awake?” he said.

Rey nodded. “Mm-hm. Yes.”

He lifted his head to look at her face. Rey turned toward him. It took her a few tries to meet his gaze fully.

“Feeling better?”

“Yes,” she said.

Ren pulled the fabric of her nightgown into his fist until it was bunched up at her waist. The hard bones of his hips and his hard cock pressed against her naked skin.

“You don’t look like you feel better,” he said. He kissed the corner of her mouth.

“Where did you go?”

“Hm?”

“When you got up.”

“Did you miss me?”

Rey did not answer.

“Just the bathroom,” he said “Nothing sinister.”

“Finn’s coming soon,” she said.

“Did you dream about him coming for you? Or just me?”

“H-his note said.” Ren moved his hips. “His note from yesterday,” Rey added.

Ren nodded. “Let him. He can’t have you.”

Rey lifted her head away from his mouth. “He doesn’t want to ‘have’ me.”

“Then he’s an idiot. Either way, you won’t go with him.”

“I’ll go wherever I want.”

“I know you will,” he said. Ren drug his lip against the corner of her jaw. She felt his tongue and the cold air against the trail it left on her skin. When he moved his hips and his erection slid between her buttocks, he exhaled. Rey felt a little echo of his pleasure between her legs and involuntarily twitched.

Ren threw the blanket off their bodies. Rey tensed against him.

“I’m cold,” she protested.

“I’m warm,” he said.

He passed his arm under Rey’s head, simultaneously propping himself up and cradling her head in the crook of his elbow. He kissed her, hard, then soft, mouth closed. His nose bent against her cheek. He gripped her hip with the pads of her fingers. He pulled away and Rey craned to follow him. He looked momentarily surprised, touched even. He kissed her on the cheek.

“Do you want me?” he said.

Rey bit her lip. Ren looked at it, then her eyes. Rey felt out of breath suddenly.

“That… that’s a big uh, question.”

“Help me,” he said.

“What?” The inner corners of Rey’s eyebrows twitched.

“I want you to do it. I want to know you want it.”

Ren’s hand ran across Rey’s arm until it rested on her wrist. He guided her hand between her own legs. She parted her thighs. Her fingers brushed against his erection, and she flinched. She hadn’t touched it with her hands before. As she gripped it, he grabbed onto her hips, his finger gently pressing into the hollow of her hipbone.

She gingerly ran her fingers across the bottom of it. He shuddered. The man who’d chased her through the woods and made her heart beat so hard vision had nearly been white, the man who’d made her arch and squirm under him, had shuddered. She tried again, firmer. The skin moved under her fingers, over the hard structure and little veins underneath it. His hips and his jaw moved forward. His eyes were on hers.

Rey moved her hand up and down once more. The top of his erection brushed against the folds of skin between Rey’s legs. His thighs tensed. She noticed when her palm passed over the spot where he’d touched her it was wet. His face looked almost pained.

“Please,” said Kylo Ren.

“Don’t move.”

He froze. She ran her fingers underneath him once more, and as she moved them up the shaft of his penis she tilted her hips back. She ran her fingers upward and pressed towards herself, felt as her skin resisted and then gave way and he slid inside of her. He stayed dutifully still. Rey slowly rocked her hips backward, exhaling jerkily as she took him in. She felt his fingers tense on her hip, felt the muscles in his thighs and stomach strain with the effort of staying still for her.

Through their connection, she felt his need and felt him resist the overwhelming desire to move. He did not, for her. Because she’d said so. Because he wanted her to want him.

She panted, her breath moving up and down her body as if she had been pulled tight and then plucked like a string of an instrument. His eyelashes fluttered as he felt her move. She felt him feel it. Her heart beat faster.

“OK,” she said. She meant it to be reassuring. She was not sure who it was supposed to reassure.

His eyebrows lifted, his eyes desperate. He wet his lips. Rey put his hand over his, interlocked her fingers with his. Rey kissed him. She pressed her tongue against the seam of his lips, and they parted for her. She rocked her hips back into him. She reached between her legs and felt the soft skin beneath the base of his penis with her fingers. He inhaled, pulled away, and rested his forehead against hers. He opened his eyes slowly, his eyelids heavy as if drugged.

“Y-you can move,” said Rey.

Ren kissed her.

They spent time like that, luxuriating. They looked into one another’s eyes, they watched for little expressions. Ren moved slowly as he could stand. After a while his cock became less hard, but it didn’t feel like it was about that. It was about his mouth on hers, her hand on his, and how skin all over her body felt bathed in a chemical euphoria that radiated from wherever he touched her. She heard his heartbeat in her ears and knew her heartbeat was the same. She couldn’t tell the difference.

He moved more quickly, more insistently, and she arched back into him. He grabbed at her chest and pulled her down against his hips, a high sigh escaping from deep in his throat. She felt his pleasure, a dim echo of it, and held herself back from her own to observe it. She felt how powerless as his hips jerked and as his world narrowed down to the cock between his legs and the woman wrapped around it. He was at her mercy.

It was not the same satisfaction as when he’d made her come, but it was something like it.

—

Rey got out of bed after a little while. Rey pulled the nightgown over her head and tossed it at her feet. She sat on the toilet and sat a while. Ren knocked. She stood as he came in. They each looked the other up and down. Rey had to pull her eyes upward. There was something shocking about him naked, although she thought it might be the same for any naked man. Ren reached into the shower and turned on the water.

“You’re welcome to join me,” he said.

Rey did. She didn’t have much experience with water showers. There were public sonic showers which were free on the third Primeday of every calendar month, and which cost an eighth of a portion for additional uses. That was much too expensive for every day. It was more for health than it was to avoid offending the senses. Everyone had a stench, unpleasant but a fact of life. Everyone kept a polite distance.

Kylo Ren did not have a strong stench. Rey found herself self-conscious. She had not showered the previous night. Kylo Ren had washed her off his skin but she had not washed him off. She wondered if that was strange to him. She felt a stab of defiant anger at the idea he might have thought anything at all. She watched how he used soap, passing it over a piece of cloth and then rubbing the cloth over his body. She imitated him.

He stepped out, she stepped out. He pulled a towel out of a cabinet and tossed it over her head. She pulled it off and scowled at him. He was too busy drying his own hair to notice. Rey wrapped the towel around her body and followed him out into the room. Ren opened a sliding closet door and retrieved a set of dove gray robes. Rey did not see any clothes for herself.

“Where are my clothes?” she asked.

“You call for your lady-in-waiting. She brings them. They’ll bring food shortly after. You’ll be briefed by Orenfo after breakfast. Most of the governing responsibility is delegated to planetary governors, but you have absolute authority to appoint and demote, and to overrule their decisions. The Senate mostly serves an advisory and diplomatic function.”

“Finn’s coming.”

Ren glanced up at her, then down. He straightened his back.

“You won’t go with him,” he said. He did not sound as sure as he had when they were in bed. He wrapped his belt around him.

“You’ll come with me,” she said.

Ren’s fingers froze above his belt fastening. “You think so?” he said. There was a dangerous edge to his tone of voice.

“I want you to come with me.”

He looked at her. His face moved like the surface of a pond with a rock tossed into it, rippling between outrage and betrayal before it smoothed itself out to a facade of passive disdain.

“You don’t even like me,” he accused. “When your Finn mounts his daring rescue of you, why shouldn't I tear him limb from limb for trying to take you from me?"

“Your name was on that note too.”

“So what?” he snapped.

“I think he's coming for you too. He's rescuing both of us."

Ren stared at her.

" _What_?" he said.

"Come with us."

The blood drained from Kylo Ren's face.

The door comm chimed. They both froze. Rey felt something was wrong immediately, some electric tension in the air. She caught Ren’s eye. Ren reacted first, lurching hurriedly toward the door. He hit the comm button.

“Yes?” he said.

“The hour is late,” said a familiar female voice. “It is nearly noon.”

Rey made hard eye contact with Ren. Rey had no sense of time without the sun. Ren evidently had not been paying attention. The color drained from his face. Rey padded over to the door. She glanced up at Ren. He depressed the pad.

“I am fine, Betora,” said Rey. “Please get me something to wear.”

“I have your clothes. The door is locked. Let me in, my lady.”

Rey looked up at Ren. He jerked his head over toward the closet. She ran over to it and dropped her towel. She pulled a too-large tunic off a hander and threw a robe over her shoulders quickly. It came down over her knees.

“How many are there?” she said.

“I feel seven total. Two imperial guards, four storm troopers, and Betora herself is trained. I think they have a droid to hack the console, too. Did you practice any unarmed combat?”

“No,” she said, fiddling with the belt, trying to get it tight enough to keep her modesty.

“Shit. Can you lift heavy things, at least? Rocks? Throwing people follows the same principle.”

Rey laughed ruefully. “Not with this body.”

He rolled his eyes. “With the Force, not your body.”

“Oh.” She said. It had not even occurred to her to use the Force to carry the rocks on her Ach-To runs. “That would have been… shit. Shit. What about the light saber? Do you have Anakin’s saber?” she said.

“Anakin’s?” he said. His voice was off.

Rey pointed at the leather-bound chest in the corner of the room. “Yes, Anakin’s. That’s the chest it was in when I found it on Takodana.”

“I know that. Why do you call it ‘Anakin’s’ and not Vader’s? How do you know that name?”

“I read it in the Journal of the Willis,” said Rey. “Where is the saber?”

Rey tried pulling on a pair of breeches, but they were too large to stay up. There were no shoes for her either. She gritted her teeth in frustration.

“Have you met him?” said Ren.

“I’m not talking about this right now.”

Ren stalked over to the chest and threw it open. He tossed it at her and she caught it.

“There’s no kyber crystal in it.”

“Finn’s note says it’s behind the portrait in the next room,” said Rey.

“There are a lot of people between it and us and most of them have blasters.”

They heard a metallic clank and whirring noise. Rey ran to the door. She started punching the console. Ren pulled her back. She shook him off of her.

“We need to break the console!” Rey hissed.

“That would trap us in here indefinitely,” Ren hissed back.

The door mechanism creaked and whirred within the wall. The door shuddered.

“Get behind me,” he said.

“I can fight well enough to kick your ass any day,” she snarled.

“We’re not going to win unless we have a strategy,” he said. “We need to look for the right—“

The door swung open and six troopers pushed into the room, blasters raised. Ren stepped out in front of Rey. She glared at him but decided against a slap fight over who stood where. He shifted from one foot to another, anticipating a fight.

Betora, in black robes, came in last. Her face was painted white, her hair in a high updo.

“This is treason,” spat Ren. “This wasn’t the deal.”

Betora held her head up high and looked at Rey and Ren, considering them, dissecting them.

“Who are you?” Betora said.


	13. Chapter 13

“I am Senator Ben—“

Betora held her hand up. The guards clicked the safeties off on their blaster rifles. Ren shut his mouth. Betora looked directly at Rey. Rey looked behind Betora. The red guards stood in front of the open door, blocking it. Ren had already seen. His heart beat in his chest. Ren himself was impulsive. He saw the same in Rey. He held on tight to his temper in case she could not. Someone needed to stay cool, and it would have to be him. He wasn’t sure what Rey would do.

He looked from trooper to trooper. There were six blasters. Betora was unarmed. He could stop maybe one if they chose to fire. He thought of making a sudden move and ending it. He’d had twelve hours of the life he’d wanted. Perhaps that was enough. But he might die and leave Rey alone. She might die and leave him alone.

That risk was not acceptable. He held his arm out to keep Rey back.

Betora sneered. “I have been by my lady’s side for five years. My lady wouldn’t hide behind some man.”

“Excuse me?” said Rey. She ducked under Ren’s arm.

“Rey—" said Kylo Ren.

“Shut up,” both women chorused. Ren rolled his eyes and crossed his arms as Rey stood toe to toe with her double. Betora showed her teeth. It wasn’t a smile. There was no mirth. Betora flicked her eyes up and down at Rey, openly disgusted.

“You’re a better physical double than I am. I’ll give you that,” said Betroa. “But whoever sent you— they couldn’t find a more refined woman? You walk like a farm animal.” Rey’s eyelashes flickered. Betora caught it and smirked.

“I can see why you admire her,” said Rey. Her voice shook. “You have to hide behind six men before you have the guts to talk like that. I bet you feel really powerful.”

Kylo Ren held his breath. Betora turned her head away to stare out the viewport at the planet. She ran her tongue over her front teeth, nodding.

Betora’s hands moved quickly, precisely upward, the ball of her hand smacking Rey’s nose. Rey collapsed, clutching her nose. Rey looked up at Kylo Ren, blood screaming out from her nose like a river down a steep hill.

Ren was locked in a wide-eyed rictus, using every bit of willpower not to launch himself at Betora’s throat. Betora crouched, indifferent to his fury. She ran her finger’s through Rey’s hair, gripping it by the root and yanking her head backward. Kylo Ren clenched his jaw.

“He likes you a lot. I can tell. My lady taught me about power. This is power. The soldiers supporting me, the fact they know where their loyalties lie— that is power.”

Rey blew blood out of her mouth as she panted. Betora pointed up at Ren and said, “He’d like to kill me right now. He knows I’m going to torture both of you until you tell me where my lady is. Then I’m going to shoot each of you in the face. He knows that. He’s still not helping you. That’s power.”

Betora put her gloved hand over Rey’s nose and squeezed. Rey screamed.

“Oh, that’s broken,” murmured Betora.

“I’m going to destroy you,” said Kylo Ren.

“Don’t threaten me,” said Betora. She pressed her lips together and squeezed harder. Rey’s lungs had emptied, and she spastically pulled in gulps of air through her closed throat only for them to leak out in incoherent, halting guttural noises.

“I’m not threatening you,” said Kylo Ren. He looked up at the ceiling. He raised his voice. “I know you can hear me. This is not what you promised me. I will destroy you.”

“Who are you talking to?” said Betora.

Ren’s head snapped back down. He spoke to Betora. “That’s the Empress’s body you’re harming.”

Betora narrowed her eyes. She looked up and down Rey’s writing body before releasing Rey. Rey sobbed, and Ren winced at the sound. Betora stood, brushing the front of her long skirt off with her palms.

“Get up,” Betora barked at Rey. Rey rolled over onto her palms. Blood flowed from her face onto the carpet and bloomed outwards as it soaked into the fibers.

“You shouldn’t make her walk,” said Kylo Ren.

“Her nose is broken. Not her legs.”

“It’ll be hours before she’ll be in a state to tell you anything useful. If you put her in too much pain too quickly she’ll lie to please you. You want her tired, not desperate.”

“And you would know, Senator?”

Ren raised his eyebrows. “I would know.”

“Really?” Betora rolled the word around in her mouth. “Where did you gain your expertise, Senator?”

“I am not a Senator,” he said.

Betora considered him a moment, her face moving in a tightly controlled display of choosing to believe him. He was not sure if she was acting. He was not meant to be sure, he knew. She was in control, and that was what he was meant to know. Ren found it almost admirable.

“I have an idea,” she said in a pleasant tone. “I’d normally have an interrogator droid break her fingers. But I’ll give you a chance to employ your expertise instead.”

Kylo Ren swallowed. Betora strode up to Ren, stepping over Rey’s panting body. Betora stood on her tiptoes, her face upturned. She breathed against the skin of his neck. She looked like Rey but did not smell like her. His lip curled in disgust. He lifted his chin out away from her face.

She purred at him as if he’d fucked her. “In your considerable experience, have you ever tortured someone you loved?”

“Yes,” he breathed.

She didn’t seem pleased with the answer. He was too comfortable with it; he should have pretended to be uneasy. She glanced down at the lightsaber clipped to his belt. She took it in hand. He kept his eyes forward.

“It’s not functional,” he said. His voice wavered. “You don’t need to take it.”

“Oh, I know,” she said. “That’s one thing about being a body double. I spent a lot of time looking and not touching. You seem like you know what that’s like. I might give you one last time with her after you’ve both given me what I want. I bet you’d like that.”

Ren stared straight ahead. She ran her fingers up and down the hilt, exploring while she watched for his reaction. Despite himself, he felt the blood rush to his face. He swallowed, frustrated he’d given her even that much satisfaction. She dropped the saber and stepped away from him.

She jerked her head toward Rey. “Pick her up.”

“I-I can walk,” panted Rey.

“Shut up,” snarled Betora.

Ren stood, rigid. His fists were balled at his side. One of the storm troopers stepped forward. The trooper pressed his rifle against Ren’s back.

“Do as she says,” said the trooper.

“Yes, thank you,” snapped Betora, unhappy with being undermined. Ren’s face was carefully still. He knelt next to Rey. Rey looked like she was trying not to vomit.

“You heard the man,” murmured Ren. It was not inflected like a question, but he hoped she understood.

She nodded and winced from the pain of moving her head. He took her by the hand, wrapped her arm around his shoulder and scooped her up. Rey clutched him. The trooper pressed his blaster into the small of Ren’s back. Ren shifted forward. He looked from one trooper to another and out into the hall. It was empty.

“You first,” said Ren to Betora. She narrowed his eyes at him.

“We must still follow protocol,” she said acidly. “The Empress and her consort should lead the way.”

Ren waited until the trooper behind him jostled him before he took a step. The red guards stepped aside for them. Rey stirred against his chest. He felt a dim echo of what she felt: shocking, blinding pain and terror it might get worse.

“It’s going to be all right,” muttered Ren. He crossed the threshold. He took three steps into the great sitting room and paused until he felt the barrel of the blaster against his back again.

“Move,” said the trooper.

“You have to shoot,” said Ren.

“I’ll give you until three to move,” said the trooper. “One.”

The trooper was blocking the door with his body. “Step aside,” said one of the red guards.

“THREE,” Ren shouted.

Time slowed. He clutched Rey close to him as he threw himself to the ground onto his side. He heard the blaster go off and the first whooping klaxon of an emergency alarm start to sound before he hit the ground. He looked up to see a Red imperial guard thrust his arm through the door to the bedchamber just as it slammed shut, crushing the armor and the forearm underneath. Ren saw the hand go limp. He could not hear its owner scream through the blast proof door. He tore his gaze away and looked down at Rey.

Rey nodded at him to let him know she was all right. She blew air through her mouth to blow away the blood which clung to her lips. He offered her the lapel of his outer robe. She wiped her mouth on it and sniffed.

The trooper shot the droid they’d used to open the door, then the door panel. He pulled his helmet off and backed up to them, blaster pointed at the chamber door.

“You OK, Rey?”

“Hurts,” she said.

“Yeah?” said Finn. He looked out of the corner of his eye at Kylo Ren before looking back. “Listen, we gotta go.”

“I’m going to get something,” said Kylo Ren.

“Sure wish you wouldn’t,” shouted Finn above the alarm. He trained his blaster on Ren. He clicked and unchecked the safety for emphasis.

“The exit to this room is also sealed,” said Ren. “It’s set to lock after blaster fire.”

Finn looked to the exit. It was closed off by a metal blast door.

“Shit,” said Finn.

Kylo Ren slid Rey off his lap. Finn followed Ren with the blaster barrel. Ren ignored him in favor of the painting above the mantle and what was behind it. He lifted his hands toward the painting on the wall. He felt its weight, its shape in the Force. He gripped it.

He threw his hands to the side. The painting followed their movement and flew across the room, its frame splintering as it hit the wall. There was a recession in the wall and a metal box in it. Ren waved his hand and it tipped outward, falling onto the mantle and making a loud metal “chunk” noise as it bounced off the marble. Ren walked over to it and lifted it, inspecting the lock as he walked back.

“Thumbprint lock. Rey?” Ren said. He glanced up at her.

Rey had sat up. She’d left a bloody handprint on the rich woven Couruscanti rug. She pinched her nose between her thumb and forefinger with her head tilted back. She rolled her eyes and held her hand up to Ren.

Finn looked at her incredulously.

“You trust him?” he said.

“No,” she replied.

Ren seethed. He held the box out to her. She wiped her right thumb against the fabric on her lap before pressing it against the lock pad. The box made a faint clanking noise as it opened. Ren retrieved the crystal from the foam inside, palmed it, and picked up the lightsaber at his side. He unscrewed the outer casing.

“Let me have it,” said Rey.

“You’re not in fighting condition,” said Kylo Ren.

“I don’t care,” said Rey. She stood and held her hand out. He pressed his lips together and looked down at her. Blood had gotten into her hair. The alarm klaxon whooped. Ren raised his voice over it.

“I want to protect you.”

Rey pointedly licked the blood off her upper lip. He looked away. He absently slid the crystal into the hilt and screwed it shut again. He held it in his hands tightly.

“It was harder for me to stay still than it would have been to kill her.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“They would have killed me.”

Rey nodded. “Right.”

“I would have left you alone here. I didn’t think you’d want that.”

He lifted his eyes to her face. Her lips parted. She took a slow breath out of her mouth. She looked deeply unhappy. She dropped her hand. She looked over at Finn and glanced at his weapon, still trained at Ren. He lowered it reluctantly.

“Can you walk?” said Ren.

“Yeah,” she said.

Ren made eye contact with Finn. “Do you have an idea where we can go.”

Finn nodded. “I snuck Vader onto a shuttle an hour ago. He’s waiting.”

“You did what?”

“We gotta go,” said Finn. He jogged over to the chamber entrance.

“Not that way,” shouted Kylo Ren.

“This is the way out,” said Finn.

“The blaster fire triggered a lockdown. There are thirty guards out that way,” said Ren.

“Shit,” said Finn.

Rey looked around. She pointed at the air ducts. “We could hide in those,” said Rey. Finn ran over and started inspecting the sheet metal seam around the duct for a way to pry it open.

Ren shook his head. “Those will be locked down, too.”

“Shit,” repeated Finn.

Rey’s eyes unfocused as she thought. After a minute, they focused again on Finn.

“Put your helmet on,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Put it on.”

Finn shoved his head back into the helmet. Rey turned to Ren. “Will that saber cut through the door?”

He thought. “Yes. The storm troopers—”

“I need to be able to talk to the troopers on the other side. Just cut me a hole big enough to do that.”

“What could you possibly—“

Rey rolled her eyes at him. “When the lockdown ends, both doors will open, right? We’ll be stuck between them, right?”

Ren thought. “Flanked. Yes.”

“I have to try.”

Ren chewed on his lower lip as he considered it. He nodded.

“Get against the wall,” he said.

Rey and Finn pressed themselves against the doorframe. Ren flicked the saber on. It unfurled in a steady blue blade. He hesitated for a moment. This was the first time he’d held a working version of his grandfather’s saber.

There wasn’t any time to admire it. He strode to the door and pressed the tip against it. It hesitated at the blaster-proof coating, then yielded as he pushed his weight against it. Finn flinched as molten metal bubbled forth and spilled onto the ground by his boot.

Ren very carefully cut a circular hole into the door, then flicked the blade off and pressed himself against the door, opposite the wall Rey and Finn. He closed his eyes and used the Force to push the chunk of metal he’d cut loose inward. It fell with a clank.

A trooper shoved the barrel of his weapon into the hole and fired. A blaster bolt flew across the room and scorched a hole in the wall, throwing sparks down onto the carpet.

“Hold your fire!” Ren snarled. He reached through the door with his mind and pushed. They heard a loud grunting noise as the trooper knocked backward.

“Surrender or you won’t get out alive,” said a voice through the hole in the door. “The lockdown will expire in ninety seconds. Put down your weapons, lie face down on the ground.”

“I am the Empress.”

“We will verify your identity, madam. Out of an abundance of caution, you must disarm.”

“Betora has made an attempt on my life with the cooperation of four stormtroopers and two—“ Rey looked to Ren.

“Imperial guards.”

“—Imperial guards. There will be another attempt when the door to my chamber opens and the would-be assassins are released. I will not disarm.”

They heard muttering through the door.

“We can extend the lockdown and find a maintenance droid to cut open the door. That’ll take a few hours. We’ll need to verify your identity at that time.”

Ren found that satisfactory, but Finn shook his head emphatically ‘no.’ “Vader” he mouthed.

Rey thought. She closed her eyes. She steadied her voice.

“You don’t need me to verify my identity,” she said.

There was a pause. “I don’t need you to verify your identity.”

“I am the Empress.”

“You are the Empress.”

They heard another voice. “Wait, what?”

“There are too many of them for that,” muttered Kylo Ren.

“How do you know she’s the Empress?” said the second voice.

“It’s— it’s obvious,” the first trooper said defensively.

“How?”

“She used that lightsaber to cut a hole in the door,” said the first trooper.

Rey and Ren looked at each other in shock.

The second voice paused. “Is that what happened?” it shouted through.

“Yes!” said Rey. “I retrieved the kyber crystal from the safe behind the painting. It unlocks with my thumbprint.”

There was a long, sickening pause. Finn's hand found Rey's and they locked fingers. Ren held his breath.

“...Shit. Shit. Extend the lockdown!” shouted the second trooper. “There’s been an attempt on the Empress’s life!”

“No wait!” called Rey. “I want out!”

“Madam, we can’t let the assassins out of your chamber. You’ll have to wait for the droid to cut through.”

Rey rolled her eyes and threw her hands up.

“Stand clear from the door,” commanded Kylo Ren.

He plunged the saber into the door again, this time starting a the bottom corner and cutting up the side. He strained against the hilt as he drew the saber upward and across the door, straining with the effort. A bead of sweat rolled down his brow. By the time he was finished he was so tired he simply kicked it inward. It fell backward and clanged against the hallway floor.

The stormtroopers trained his weapons on him.

“Put the weapon down!” shouted a trooper.

He’d done his job. He gripped the hilt of the saber and stared out at the troopers, waiting for one of them to fire.

Something touched his upper arm. He startled and looked down. Rey had placed her hand on his upper arm. She addressed the troopers.

“Forgive my husband. He is tense after the attempt on my life.”

Her husband.

She’d called him her husband.

Ren gripped the saber tighter. It was just an act. It was just for other people. That’s all she meant, he assured himself.

Her husband.

“O-of course, madam,” said one of the troopers. He had the red armband of a commanding officer. The officer motioned and he lowered their weapons.

Rey cleared her throat. “I’m going to the shuttle bay. I’m taking my husband and the trooper who saved my life. No one else.”

“Madam,” said the officer, “do you think it’s wise to—“

“Yes. I do,” said Rey. “Are you questioning me?”

Rey held her free hand up, her eyes narrowed. It was an empty threat. The Empress would not make empty threats. Kylo Ren reached out through Force and gently pressed against the trooper’s neck. The trooper stood a little straighter. Rey gently squeezed Ren’s bicep in an acknowledgment. She felt what he was doing.

“No ma’am,” said the stormtrooper.

“Good,” said Rey.

Rey let go of Kylo Ren’s arm. She stepped through the door, chin high, full of purpose. Rey was a survivor, and she was every bit the Empress she needed to be to survive. Thirty armed men, each a head taller than her, stood at attention as they fell into two lines flanking her. Ren flicked his saber off and strode after her, with Finn following a short distance behind.

Rey took the first right. Ren rounded the corner a second later.

She wasn’t in front of him. He stopped in his tracks. After what felt like an eternity, he spotted Rey pressed against the wall to his right, panting.

He gave her a tight smile. She rubbed the blood off her face with her sleeve and gave him an adrenaline-manic grin.

“I don’t know where the hell I’m going,” she said.

He wasn’t sure what to say. She was smiling at him.

He wondered if the void had provided. Obey and it would provide. That was the promise it whispered in his dreams. At that moment there was nowhere else he’d rather be. He did not know if it was because of the void or despite it.

He had to say something. He would seem strange if he did not.

“You did fine,” he managed.

“I guess I had some help,” she said.

Kylo Ren nodded.

Finn rounded the corner blindly, ran straight into Kylo Ren’s back, and lost his balance. Ren reached for him in vain as he fell to the ground. Finn’s armor clattered on the marble floor, his rifle making a terrible high screeching noise against the stone as it slid.

The din echoed through the high halls. Finn scrambled to his feet. Down through the hall, they heard thirty sets of feet start to run.

“Shit,” said Finn. He took off sprinting and Rey and Ren took off after him.


	14. Chapter 14

Rey’s bare feet beat against the marble floor of the halls.  The general alarm started whooping, and the white skylight panels turned to an eerie red.   Finn slid to a stop at an intersection and peeked around the corner before continuing left.

“ _Now_ you’re looking?” snapped Kylo Ren.

“You were stopped _right_ at the corner!  This helmet cuts off my vision!” countered Finn.

“Is that why you didn’t you pick up your weapon?  Your helmet?” shouted Kylo Ren.

“Both of you, shut up!” said Rey.

The staircase was at the end of a very long long hall bordered by white marble pillars which stood out stark against the black walls and floors.  Little veins of gold snaked their way along the floors and down the nigh-interminable hall.

Rey looked behind her and saw the giant brass doors to the Senate chambers.  At a flat sprint they barely made a dent in the distance.  Rey felt behind her, though the Force, at the teeming mass of human life hurdling down the hallway.

They wouldn’t be halfway down the hall before the troopers turned the corner, Rey realized.

Rey slowed and Ren, running beside her, slowed with her.  Finn, his peripheral vision cut off by his helmet, kept sprinting.

“This isn’t going to work!” she said.

“What?” said Kylo.

“Finn, they’re coming!” she yelled.

Finn turned his head to look behind her as Rey grabbed Kylo Ren by the collar and threw her weight against him, tackling him into the space between two pillars.  Shocked, he did not resist.  His back hit the wall.   Rey could not tell if he’d turned red or if the red light of the ship on high alert merely cast his face in that color.

Rey pressed herself against the pillar closer to the stairwell and swallowed.  She peeked out.  Three stormtroopers in a mad sprint turned the corner and began to fire, scorching the marble floor. by Finn’s feet.  He dove behind the pillar closest to him, several feet in front of where Rey and Kylo stood.  A bolt hit the pillar a hand-width away from Rey’s head, and she gasped.

She looked over at Kylo Ren, who whose face hard darkened with fury.

“Don’t,” she said.

“I’m getting you a weapon,” he said.

Kylo Ren ran out from behind the pillar, swinging the blade to deflect the bolt before Rey even heard the first rifle blast.  He did not deflect the second, as it missed.  Rey felt two soldiers about to round the corner and ran out after Ren, throwing her hands up, holding them in place.  Ren lifted the one farthest from him and pulled him forward, knocking over three stormtroopers as he dragged the trooper’s throat to his open hand and onto his unfurled blade.

Ren looked into the trooper’s eyes through the dark helmet lenses, his face contorted in some undefinable mix of rage and satisfaction.  Ren jerked the penetrated body to him to bury the blade deeper.

Rey had seen that look on his face.

“The rifle!” said Rey.

Ren glanced over at her, taken out of the intimate moment between himself and the trooper.  He moved his hand down to take the blaster out of the trooper’s loosening fingers, tossing it over to her.  He withdrew the blade and the body fell, spent.  Rey swallowed at the sight of the four other soldiers scrambling to their feet.

“Do it,” Ren said.

Rey fired, and her shot hit its mark, striking one of the troopers as he started to stand.  Another fired and Ren blocked the bolt with his saber while Rey returned fire and hit another trooper.  She— Rey somehow knew it was a woman— fell.  Ren took a step back and pushed the fallen trooper backwards, into the feet of another wave of troopers rounding the corner.

“Fall back!” Ren shouted.  Rey fired again and again, striking men and women as Ren blocked their bolts and knocked them down.  A few surviving soldiers took cover behind the pillars and started firing from behind them.  Ren threw his free hand up, fist clenched, and pulled another rifle to them as the drew parallel to where Finn took cover.  He tossed the rifle at Finn, who caught it.

Finn tore his helmet off and threw it to the ground.  “I hate this thing!”

Kylo Ren rolled his eyes. “Get out here and cover our backs, traitor!”

“You don’t get to call me that!” shouted Finn.

“Talk about it later!” said Rey.

Finn ran out of his cover, firing and hitting a trooper hiding behind a pillar and another turning the corner as he ran out before standing behind Kylo Ren.

“It’s clear!” shouted Finn.

As Finn took a step forward, Kylo stepped back.  A bolt whizzed past Rey, too close, and she cried out.  Ren spotted the hiding trooper who had fired it and jerked his fist closed, and the trooper fell sideways, clutching his throat.  Rey felt his life draining from him and shot him for good measure.  Rey saw another trooper raise his rifle and she drew her hand across the air grunting as she knocked him down.  She shot him as he tried to get to his feet.  Ren glanced sideways at her.

“How many left?” said Finn.

“Five or six!” Rey shouted back.

Ren closed his hand, crushing another soldier’s windpipe.  “ _Five_ ,” he said.

“Think you’re ready to start running?” said Finn.

“One’s enough to shoot us,” snarled Ren.

“More will be coming,” said Finn.  “The stairwell’s a better defensive position.  We don’t want to be flanked.”

Ren’s face twisted up into frustrated assent.  He caught Rey’s eye and jerked his head back. Rey and Kylo Ren rocketed past Finn before Finn had a chance to react.  A bolt whizzed past Rey’s ear.

“Damn it, guys!” shouted Finn as he drew even with them.

“Three coming up the stairs!” shouted Rey.

“Wait, what?” said Finn.

Rey drew her rifle up and fired wildly as a pair of trooper helmets rose into view.  She missed they, ducked.  Finn slowed and turned to fire at the troopers behind them.  Rey crouched to let off two more bolts at the staircase, keeping the troopers pinned on the half-landing on the floor below.  One of her bolts hit the railing on the left side.

Ren did not slow.  He barreled toward it undeterred.

“Ren!” she shouted.

He headed straight for the railing.  He meant to vault it.

“Shit!” she screamed and ran after him, firing.  Behind her, she heard the whine of Finn’s rifle as he fired.

Over Ren went, his palm brushing the top of the railing as the jumped it, lightsaber held to his side and clear of his body.  Rey drew up on the scene, firing in time to see him shove his saber between the rails and into the trooper standing on the higher level of the twisting staircase.  Rey shot a second trooper on the landing, but the third weapon upward at Ren and fired.  Ren staggered backwards, clutching his side.

Rey screamed and threw her arm up throwing the trooper against the wall.  His boots dangled as he kicked and squirmed.

“Are you OK?” said Rey.  She kept her eyes on the trooper.  He’d shot him.  She’d thought of killing Kylo Ren.  She’d beaten herself up over how she’d frozen.

And now someone shot him.

Ren’s breath hissed out.  Rey’s finger’s twitched.  The trooper squirmed.

“Rey,” said Kylo Ren.

Rey heard Finn’s footfall on the stairs above.

“Rey?” came Finn’s voice.

“He shot him,” she said.

“Is he OK?”

“I’ll live,” said Kylo Ren.

“Put him down,” said Finn.

“He could have killed him,” said Rey.  She tightened her fingers.  The man started making horrible, throaty noises.  Rey hated him for it.  He didn’t have the right to pain.  Pain was too human for him.

“I’ll live,” repeated Kylo Ren.

Rey sniffed.  The awful earthy stench of her own blood and the aching in her head gnawed at her.  Kylo Ren drew up and pulled himself away from the wall.  He touched her shoulder.  She exhaled.

“Put him down,” said Kylo Ren.

She relaxed her hand.  The trooper fell.  Rey panted.

Kylo Ren staggered forward and stabbed the trooper.  The trooper shuddered.  Kylo Ren glanced over at Rey.  Her mouth fell open.

“Oh, what the hell?” said Finn.  Ren flicked the saber off.

“Is that all of them?” said Ren.

“I thought you didn’t want to kill him,” said Rey.

“I didn’t want you to murder him.  Murder is the path to the Dark Side,” said Kylo Ren.

“You _just_ murdered him,” said Finn.

Kylo Ren glanced at Rey.  “But she didn’t.  We couldn’t babysit him anyway.”

Rey bore her teeth at him.  “I don’t need you to protect me from anything.  I don’t want you to.”

“Good.  I’m not going to be able to run,” said Kylo Ren.

“What?” she said.

“I said—“

“I heard you,” she replied.

Kylo Ren looked down at the lightsaber in his palm.  He tilted it this way and that.  It hummed, changing frequency from high to low as it moved through the air.  His face relaxed as he marveled.  Finally, he switched it off and held it out to her.

Rey blinked rapidly to fight off tears.

“No,” she said.

“We should go,” said Finn.  He grabbed her hand.  She pulled it away from Finn.  She leaned in close to Kylo Ren.

“I’ll slow you down,” he said.

“You don’t get to leave me just because it hurts, you son of a bitch.”

“We can’t move quickly if you’re carrying him,” said Finn.  “I’m sorry.”

Rey reeled around on him.  “Then _you_ carry him.”

“I don’t need to be carried,” said Kylo Ren testily. “There’s no point.  I just can’t run with this injury.  The Senator wasn’t as disciplined in his training as I am.  This body’s not up for it.”

Rey rolled her eyes at him.  “I’ll let them shoot me before I let you leave me here.  Do you understand me?”

Kylo Ren seethed at her, and she stared back.  He took a shaky step toward the stairs.  She grabbed his hand and made him lean on her as they walked.  His face flushed, humiliated.  Rey thought it served him right.

“How far is the hangar?” said Rey.

“Two flights of stairs, one long hall,” said Finn.

Ren grunted between his teeth as he took another step down.

“I don’t feel anyone coming.  Take your time,” said Rey.

“You spent too long with Luke,” said Ren.  “The Jedi preoccupation with ‘serving’ weakness is unbecoming.”

“I dig through trash for a living.  I wouldn’t know what’s ‘becoming.’”

Finn kept a lookout front and back.  Rey focused on helping Ren down the next step and the next.  The stairs changed from marble to metal as they descended from the political levels of the station down into the bowels.  Ren’s fingers twitched on her shoulder as he took each labored step and it shuddered up his leg and into his scorched side.  He gripped the rail.  Rey kept him moving across the landing and down the final flight.

Rey felt something ripple through the Force.  A terrible, bubbling, burning uneasy feeling.

“Betora’s coming,” said Ren.

Rey knew instantly that was it.  “I know,” she said.

Finn glanced over at Rey, tense.  “I don’t want to deal with her.”

“I can slow her down,” said Ren.

“Nope,” said Rey.

They were at the bottom of the staircase.  The floor was metal grating and dug into the soles of Rey’s feet.  It was more obviously a space station, with exposed wiring underneath the floors and pipes snaking their way in and out of the metal paneling.  The foot of the stairs was a huge metal doorframe.  Finn ran over to the keypad to inspect it.  It buzzed at him after a couple of entries.

“No dice,” he muttered.

“If you leave me with a rifle—“ said Ren.

“You should really stop offering,” said a young man’s voice.  Finn reeled around, rifle raised.

Anakin materialized in the center of the hall, his glowing figure purple in the red light.  His hands were tucked into his sleeves.  Rey looked over for Ren’s reaction.  His eyes were wide.  He shrugged Rey off gently as he could manage.  He shuffled forward like a man dying of thirst creeping toward a mirage.

“Grandfather?” he said.

Anakin raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” said Anakin.

Ren slowly sank to one knee.  He winced and after a moment, he bent the other.  His arms hung limp from his wide shoulders.

He looked so fragile.  Rey was frightened.

“Hey.  Hey, that’s OK,” said Anakin.

Ren looked upward.  His jaw was slack.

“All my life,” said Kylo Ren.  “I’ve been talking to you all my life.  I waited for you.”

“Yeah,” said Anakin.  “You should get up, though.  Vader’s waiting.”

Kylo Ren’s brows knit together.  “You’re dead,” he said.

“I’m not Vader.  I mean, I was.  It’s simpler to call me Anakin.  I’m from the other universe.  It’s complicated.”

Anakin glanced at Finn and Rey.  “Help him up, would you?”  He held his elbows out in pantomime.  

Ren frowned.  

Rey and Finn stood on either side of him and helped him up.  Kylo Ren looked at Finn and then Rey.

“You’ve met him?” he said to Rey.

Rey cleared her throat.  She nodded.  Ren looked at Anakin, pleading.

“The traitor as well?”

“Yes, we’ve talked,” said Anakin.  Ren winced.

“They don’t even…. I begged for you.  I needed you.  Why didn’t you come?” said Kylo Ren.

“I’m sorry,” said Anakin.  “Disappointing people’s kind of my thing.”

“If— if I’d had you.  If I’d had your guidance—“

“Well, you do now.  I need you to get to the shuttle.  Vader’s waiting.  He’ll help you kill the void-thing and get back to your life.  I filled him in.”

Ren was heavier, somehow.  Dead weight.

“Betora’s going to be here in a minute,” said Rey, trying to keep her voice steady.  “I don’t know how fast he can walk.”

“Not fast enough,” said Anakin.

“I’m not leaving him,” said Rey.

Anakin thought.  “Have you considered starting a fire?” he said cheerfully.  “That’s what I’d do.  I’m not known for my judgment, though.”

“ _What_?” said Finn.  Finn’s eyes moved back and forth as he thought.  Anakin pointed at Finn and grinned.

“He gets it.”

“Gets what?” said Rey.

“Stay here!” said Finn, who dropped Kylo Ren’s shoulder and took off running down the hall.

“Where are you going?”

“The supply room’s nearby!”

“We’re sitting ducks!” shouted Rey.

“Then hide!” he shouted back as he turned out of sight.

Rey grabbed Ren’s elbow and dragged Ren flat against the wall.  She helped him sit on the ground.  He kept his eyes fixed on Anakin’s ghost.  Anakin crouched in front of him.

“I needed you,” said Kylo Ren.

“Yeah,” said Anakin.

Rey heard a pair of footsteps echoing in the stairwell.  She could not tell if it was the Force or her ears, but her nose and the skin under her eyes ached with every hollow footfall, and she shuddered.  Anakin turned his head toward the stairs.

“You feel that?” Anakin said to Rey.  

Rey nodded.

—

Finn found the supply closet where he’d slept the night before and slammed his palm on the control panel to open the mechanism.  He dragged the entire shelf, boxes and all, to the door in an adrenaline-fueled frenzy and started throwing anything flammable at all through the door and out into the hall.  He nearly missed the bottle of bacta on the shelf.  He grabbed it and shoved it under his arm.  He tore open a package of gauze.

He pointed the blaster at the pile cardboard and gauze, said a prayer under his breath, and fired.


	15. Chapter 15

With each hollow step Rey heard, her eyelashes fluttered.  Just one pair of feet, slow and deliberate.  She stared up at Anakin, who looked up the stairs.  Rey could feel Betora.  She felt her pause on the landing with the bodies.  Rey crouched in the corner by the stairway’s doorframe and gripped her rifle, waiting to shoot if Betora crossed the threshold.

“She’ll see you,” hissed Rey.

Anakin jerked his chin up in assent.

“Are you there?” Betora called down pleasantly.  Her voice had an odd metallic quality from bouncing off stone and metal stairs.  “I hear you have taken Lord Vader.  He is ill.  Even so, he won’t let you live.”

Anakin shot Rey a sardonic look.  He looked chastened when she didn’t seem to find it funny.  Rey gripped onto Kylo Ren like a comfort object, his huge torso leaning against her left breast and shoulder.  He panted, his legs out in front of him.  Rey felt something warm and looked down.

They were in a very slowly spreading pool of Kylo Ren’s blood.  She looked up again, unwilling to look at it.  She took the lightsaber from his hand and clipped it to his belt to keep her hands busy.  They’d have to move soon.  She didn’t want to fool with it.

“Do you smell that?” breathed Kylo Ren.

She could not.  The air bubbled in her nose when she breathed through it.  The echoing steps on the stair marked off slow seconds, and after a few of those a revolting acrid taste insinuated itself into her mouth and down into her lungs.  Rey found herself exhaling forcefully and sipping air in an effort to keep it out.  It insisted.  Her eyes watered.

“You don’t want it to get out of control,” said Kylo Ren.

The steps stopped.  Anakin shifted his hand to his belt, as if ready to draw a saber.

“A holovid?” said Betora.  Rey heard the whir of a blaster’s safety switched off.

“Something like that,” said Anakin.

Betora cleared her throat and started walking again.  As she came into view, Rey fired.  Betora ducked backward, back through the door frame.  Rey heard a long controlled exhalation.

“You should come back through this door,” said Betora.  “I smell smoke.”

Rey did not answer.

“You fools.  Do you have any idea how this station suppresses fires in the crew levels?”

“I do!” said Anakin.  He glanced down at Rey.  “Follow the arrows.  Put your own mask on first before helping with his.  You’ll have to cut through to where you’re going.”

“Who the hell are you?” said Betora.

“Just a guy,” said Anakin.

White smoke started rolling down the hallway.  Rey flinched as a deafening klaxon sounded and the noise of machinery in the wall sprang into motion.

“Pray the smoke chokes you before Lord Vader,” shouted Betora.

A metal door recessed into the wall, sprang shut across the foot of the staircase, and all at once the klaxon went silent and the lights dimmed  On the far wall near the floor, a set of green arrows illuminated.

“OK, up,” said Rey.

Ren groaned and shifted.  She held onto his elbow and leaned forward.  He was heavy.  She thought suddenly of what’d happen if he passed out like that.  He huffed and wheezed his way onto his feet, his lips and eyelids a pale bruised purple.  He leaned on her shoulder.  Rey passed the rifle from her right to left hand and wrapped her right arm around his waist.  She started walking, a sliding agonizing, heavy shuffle.  Anakin walked a little ahead of them.  The blue edges of him blurred outward in the white smoke.

At the first intersection the arrows pointed in the opposite direction Finn ran and heat radiating from the direction Finn ran.  She stared down the hall and saw only a blank white sheet of smoke.  She thought of the void, of its flat blackness.

Rey couldn’t hear Finn.  She couldn’t feel him.  She could, however, hear a quiet dull roar.  She imagined him passed out and choking, his eyes bugged out and yellow-gray, mouth open and face like wax, vivid as anything she’d ever really seen and terrible.  The thought hit her in the gut as if she’d been stabbed.

She looked the other way, toward where the arrows pointed.  Anakin was there.  He gave her a tight smile.  She pulled Ren up and followed.  Ren groaned in pain.

“You should reassure him,” said Rey to Anakin.

“What should I say?”

“Say he’ll be all right.”

“I don’t know that.”

Ren’s legs weakened momentarily.  Rey stopped to pull his weight further up and let him get his balance.

“You’re going to be fine,” she lied.  Ren snorted derisively and moved his feet again.  She preferred it to silence.

Behind them, Rey heard the patter of feet.  Rey dropped herself and Kylo Ren to the ground and pulled up her blaster, reeling around.

“Who is it?” she called.

“Are you all right?” Finn’s voice replied.  Rey dropped the weapon and ran to him.  The smoke was getting very thick and he was closer than she thought.  She threw her arms around him, kissing him on the cheek in exuberant relief.  He’d shed his armor and his body suit was sopping wet with sweat.

“Don’t you leave me again,” she said.

His arms wrapped around her shoulders.  He had something in his hand.

“Sorry,” Finn said.

Kylo Ren began coughing violently.  Finn pulled away and knelt beside Kylo, who caught his breath and gave Finn a half-murderous ugly glare.  Finn unscrewed the cap to the bottle and pulled the paper seal off before stopping, unsure. Rey looked from the bottle to the wound in Ren’s side.

“Is it safe to just pour it straight in?” said Rey.  She looked at Anakin, who shrugged.

“Give it,” rasped Ren.  Finn hesitated and handed it over.  Ren tipped the contents bottle into the hole his side and cried out in pain.  The liquid made a hissing noise.  Ren threw his head back against the wall.  He found Rey’s hand with his and gripped it as he writhed, feet kicking outward spastically and gulping the air.  Finn looked at Rey, tense and ready to pull Ren off of her.  She gave him a sharp look.  Ren held on so hard to her hand her fingers went numb, and she let him.

Ren started to relax from exhaustion or relief.  Rey could not tell for sure, but despite the smoke Ren started breathing easier.  He shifted to stand without having to be prompted.  Rey took him by the elbow and helped him up.  The bottle rolled off his lap and spilled its contents onto the floor.

The smoke started to sting her eyes in ernest.  Tears and sweat mixed and rolled down her face, and her nose started to run.  Rey wiped her face with her sleeve.

“How do they put out fires on a space station?” said Rey.

“They let the air out,” said Finn.

“ _What_?” said Rey

“They give you a few minutes to get to the masks first,” said Finn.

Ren shifted to stand.  Rey held onto his elbow and wordlessly, pointedly looked at Finn to help him up.  They pulled him up by his elbows.  He leaned on her and they began to follow the arrows, shuffling down the smoky hallway.

“Why wouldn’t they put it out with _water_?” said Rey.

“It’s an electrical fire at this point,” said Finn.  Rey looked at him uncomprehending and furious.  “Water’s not— look, getting the air out is the best way to— I’ll explain later, it’s just the best way.  It’s standard on a station like this.”

Ren nodded in silent agreement.  Rey looked to Anakin, who nodded sagely.

“The next time you want to _suck all the air out of a room I’m in_ , give me a heads up.”

“I just _did_ ,” said Finn.

“ _Sooner_.”

“Women hate that,” confirmed Anakin sympathetically.  Finn looked like he was considering asking about it.

The arrows ended in a set of black and yellow striped panels.  Finn turned the handle which locked the panel to the wall and pulled the cover off.  Behind it were dozens of respirators with small oxygen tanks attached to them, neatly lined up.  He pulled out one of the clear plastic masks, pulled it down over his face and adjusted a knob on the mask until the air inside was clear before pulling another one out and pulling it over Rey’s face.  He pulled the straps taut then ran his finger under the lip of the mask to check the seal.

“I’m fine,” said Anakin.  No one had asked.

Finn helped Ren with his mask, pulling it over his head and stopping, reluctant to touch him.  Rey checked the seal on his mask, stroking his cheek and down his neck and pressing out the air bubbles in the rubber against his skin.  He turned his head toward her touch.

Kylo Ren’s color improved as he took a few deep breaths.  He slowly started to shift his weight off Rey and onto his feet.

“Why aren’t there any people?” said Kylo Ren.

“Huh?” said Finn.

“Listen,” said Kylo Ren.

Rey and Finn looked up and down the hall and listened.  It was silent except for the sound of the fire and the hum of the station’s workings.

All of a sudden there was a loud hissing noise and a violent rush of air which whipped Rey’s hair against her mask, pulling the smoke and heat past them, and kept going until her vision was clear and the air was thin and cold and felt peculiar against her skin, like someone had taken a blanket off of her she didn’t know was there.  She held her breath.  The noise stopped suddenly.

Ren’s body heaved as he breathed.  He started to shiver, hunched and miserable and covered in his own blood.  His lips moved.  Rey could barely hear him.

“Not a lot of air in here,” said Anakin.  Rey could hear him fine.  She blinked.  He pointed down the hall.  “This way.”

Rey put her arm around Kylo Ren’s waist.  He was cold.  Finn did the same; he stood on the other side of Kylo Ren.  His arm rested above Rey’s on Ren’s waist.

They came to another door like the one which had cut off the stairway, designed to seal off the hall rather than function as a door every day.   Rey took the lightsaber off of Ren’s waist and plunged it into the metal door, cutting a Rey-sized door in the huge metal blockade.  She gave it a couple of exhausted kicks.  It fell forward.

Rey first saw the star field before she saw the shuttle bay and the shuttle within it.  She knew they sealed off bays with forcefields.  She didn’t remember if she’d read it first or heard it from Unkar Plutt whenever he tried to come up with something which might interest her enough to stick around and listen.  

She had never seen it, though.  She walked forward, enchanted as much by the stars as she was the space between them.  She flipped the saber off and stepped through, staring.  She glanced back quickly to see if Finn or Kylo Ren found it as strange.  Ren was merely stooping to step through.

She looked back.  Suddenly, Anakin was standing next to her.  He hadn’t gone through the door, he’d just shown up in the space between one blink and another.  Rey swallowed.

“If you told me a year ago this would be my life.…” said Rey.

“Are you liking it?” said Anakin.

Rey frowned. “I— I haven’t thought about it like that.”

“Maybe that’s good.  I always thought about whether I was happy or not when I wasn’t.  Maybe you’re happy.”

Rey glanced down at her robes, at the dry blood down her front and the little ice crystals forming on the still-wet blood which soaked her sleeve.  She rubbed her arms.

“I don’t think that’s it,” she said.

“Well, think about it,” he said.  “Where you really belong, I mean.”

Rey looked back at the boys.  Finn, stiff with cold, walked around Kylo Ren, tapping Rey as he passed.  Kylo Ren drew up close to her, arms crossed.  He’d nearly straightened his back out.  They watched Finn pull the gangplank down on the shuttle.  It was not the same as the one she’d been on with Kylo Ren, but it was three-winged and had the similar mean angular lines to it.  Kylo Ren’s shuttle aped the imperial style.  Rey supposed this shuttle was the real thing.

“Feeling better?” said Rey.

“Than gut-shot?  Yes.”

“Is it healing right?”

“I think so.”

“Okay,” she said.  It occurred to her that her questions could be interpreted as concern.  She cursed herself silently.

There was a silence.  Ren wet his lips.

“Happy to have me back?” he said.  “Not going to throw yourself at me?”

“If you keep sulking I might.”

“You’ve never acted that way with me,” he said.

“He’s my friend,” said Rey.  “You aren’t.”

“What am I?” he said.  Rey flinched.  She glanced over at him.  He stared straight ahead, eyes still red from the smoke.

Anakin cleared his throat.  Kylo Ren pretended he was not there.  Anakin wandered over to the shuttle and started chatting with Finn.  Rey and Ren watched as Anakin teased Finn about something, and Finn made a face at him.  Kylo Ren’s face hardened.

“I could have left you,” said Rey.  It was all she felt she could manage and more than she thought he deserved.  It was none of his business.

“Thank you,” he said.

Finn motioned at them and headed into the black belly of the shuttle.  Ren strode after Finn.  Rey stood, stunned for a moment, before following his lead.


	16. Chapter 16

Finn pressed a few buttons to pull up the gangplank and close the door of the shuttle behind him. The light on the control panel changed from red to green and he gave Ren and Rey a thumbs-up before removing his mask. Rey and Ren followed suit.

The chill air dampened the smell. Sometimes on Jakku someone would die in the desert heat and for the next few hours, the smell would waft across the sand and stick to everything until someone could be bothered to bury them. More often scavenging creatures would take their portions and leave behind something which no longer stank, and by morning, there might be most of a skeleton left. In time, everyone died and Jakku buried all the dead.

The smell was a little like that. The feel, what she now knew was the flow of the Force, was also similar. Death was nearby. Rey breathed through her mouth and gripped onto the hilt of her saber.

“He’s in the cockpit,” said Finn. Rey shook her hair out of her face and crept the hall. He was in the navigator’s chair, strapped in. He was wearing the body suit of a storm trooper with the sleeves and pant legs knotted. He had some kind of clear respirator over his mouth. He lifted his head off the seat and looked at her with a startling, focused malevolence.

“ _You_ ,” Vader said.

“We haven’t met,” Rey replied, her voice shaking.

“You have the body of my apprentice,” he rasped. He glanced over at Kylo Ren. “And you my grandson’s.”

“I didn’t take it on purpose,” said Rey.

“I would respect you more if you had,” he said. “But you are here now. Let’s be done with this.”

Finn knelt by Vader and checked the tubes which ran from the oxygen tank on the floor next to him to his mask. “We’ll need the pass codes to drop the magnetic shields,” he said. "Do you have them?""

“No need,” said Vader. “Don’t you feel it? We are dying.”

“… _We_?” said Kylo Ren.

“Yes, you. I wasn’t one to use the royal ‘we,’” said Anakin.

“We’re gonna be fine,” said Finn soothingly.

“Look out the view screen,” rasped Vader. Finn looked up. The view screen faced the stars.

"The coast is clear," said Finn.

"Of course it is," said Vader. "There's nobody else left alive. Look at the stars."

"Nobody?" said Rey.

"It ate them," said Anakin.

Rey felt it. She looked over at Kylo, who was pale and staring out at the stars. She picked patch of starfield out the view screen and stared, perhaps a minute, perhaps longer.

One star and then another snuffed out. Rey covered her mouth.

Finn found his voice first. “What’s it mean?”

“The universe is closing in on you,” said Vader. “Every living thing is being consumed.”

“Can we just fly to the edge of it?” said Rey. Vader and Kylo Ren scoffed. Anakin gave them each a scowl.

“Can you walk off the edge of a globe?” said Anakin gently.

“What do we do?” Rey said.

“Cut out of the belly of the beast,” said Vader.

“If you wound the Force, you may be able to break free,” said Anakin.

Kylo Ren held his hand out to Rey. She looked down at it.

“I’ll do it,” said Kylo Ren.

“Not you,” said Vader.

Kylo Ren looked sharply at him. “Why?”

“You have already fallen to the Dark Side,” Vader said. “It will be much less effective.”

"It would be a betrayal. I worshiped you."

"Would it be a betrayal of your nature? Or more of the same?" said Vader. He broke out into a coughing fit. Finn lifted his mask and he spat a great yellow mass of phlegm onto the floor.

Ren did not answer. He down, eyes focused on nothing in particular.

“What do I have to do?” said Rey.

“Kill him,” said Anakin.

“ _What_?” shouted Rey. Anakin winced at the noise.

Finn jumped to his feet and stood toe to toe with Anakin, head craning upward, fists balled.

“You say ‘trust me,’" hissed Finn. "You say ‘I wouldn’t be like this if I were still with the Dark Side.’ Bullshit.  You’re Darth Vader doing Darth Vader things.”

“ ** _I_** didn’t hide that,” said Anakin. “I told you exactly who I was and that I was going to help you. I am.  You knew exactly who was helping you.”

Finn pointed at Rey. “Is Vader trying to turn her to the Dark Side?”

“I’m sure that’s part of his motivation,” said Anakin. “But he really would be saving your lives. Strangers.”

“Why?” said Kylo Ren.

Vader shifted his torso forward in his chair, straining against the seat belt to try and keep his windpipe from clicking closed between breaths. “Obi-Wan hired a smuggler to rescue my daughter. He did not bring my son,” said Vader. “We are powerful enough in the Force to know things would have been very different if he’d chosen to bring Luke. He said he’d spoken to my grandson. He said he’d created a future where our grandchildren suffered. He asked for my help in creating a future for them where they did not suffer. Before I choked the life out of him, I promised him I would at any cost. Then I locked the smuggler up with my daughter and let nature take its course. I found and raised Obi-Wan's granddaughter.  I provided them a future."

Kylo glanced over at Rey, his eyebrows raised.

"This is messed up," said Finn.

“He’s doing the right thing now, so lay off,” said Anakin pleasantly. “And Vader did love them. Losing our wife left a hole in our hearts which children helped fill. He would do anything for them, any version of them. We have that in common.”

Vader’s mouth twisted in disgust at Anakin’s assertion, but he did not deny it. He looked defiantly up at Rey. His eyes were rimmed with pink. Moisture collected on his oxygen mask every time he exhaled.

“Girl, your counterpart saw I was ready to go, so took my arms and legs so I could not fly off to the edge of the galaxy and pass away in the darkness. She was more powerful with me alive than dead, so she did not let me die. I am more useful to you dead. Use me. Kill me. Live and take your rightful place in your galaxy.”

Rey looked out the view screen. All but a smattering of the largest stars were gone. The void was coming fast for them. Rey gripped her saber, Anakin’s saber. She looked at Finn, at his horrified face, and then at Kylo Ren, strangely placid.

“No,” said Finn as he read her face.

“I don’t want you to go,” she said. She looked at Kylo reluctantly. “Either of you.”

“You don’t have to do this,” said Finn.

She thought of them gone. Not killed, just gone as if they never existed. The end of time and obliteration of memory, even the very concept of memory. Everything which made each of them themselves. Every mark on every page and the space between them which defined them gone. They would return to the non-existence which was there before matter and time. One last goodnight, and then more than gone. Never was. Null.

And she thought of murdering a helpless man to stop it.  She'd never be the same.  Whatever happened, she'd be gone.  She tried to find the courage to end herself so her friends would still be there, and she just stood there, not moving.  She could be a monster or a coward.  She hated herself.

She could not even cry about it.

And in Kylo’s heart, and in Finn’s heart, she felt them do similar calculus.  

She felt Kylo Ren slowly come to his answer, and build his strength to see it through.

“I would be dead in five minutes without this mask. That’s years longer than I wanted,” said Vader. “Kill me now.”

“Give me the saber,” said Kylo. His voice rang hollow.

“He said it wouldn’t work as well—“ said Rey.

“Give it to me,” he repeated.

Rey held the saber out to him. He took it from her. He held it two handed. He stared down at Vader.

He quickly unscrewed the outer casing from the inner, swung his arm with all his might, smashing the delicate inner machinery against the cockpit doorframe over and over again until little shards of metal and crystal shattered and flew through the air. Rey and Finn covered their eyes with their elbows, flinching as the shards bounced off their sleeves.

Ren panted and tossed the weapon on the ground. He knelt by Vader.

“You are a fool, boy,” he said.

Ren nodded. He pulled the mask off Vader’s face and stared into his eyes.

“I don’t know if we have five minutes,” said Kylo Ren. “ I won’t make you stay longer if we do.”

Vader’s pink rimmed eyes blinked rapidly. “Thank you,” he exhaled.

Kylo looked at Finn. “Will you stay with him? He likes you better than he likes me.”

“Where are you going?”

Ren looked at Rey, then pointedly back at Finn. All of Rey’s muscles felt stiff.

“Just to the sitting area. She doesn’t need to see this,” he said. He waved his hand generally at the view screen and the dying man.

Finn slowly nodded.

Ren bent and lifted Rey in his arms and walked her the few feet to the long upholstered bench in the living area. He laid her across his lap on her side, curled up, face pressed against the rich fabric. Finn sat in the doorway between the cockpit and the living quarters, where he could see both Vader and them. Vader coughed weakly.

“It’s still not too late,” said Anakin.

“You’re free to go,” said Kylo Ren.

Rey started sobbing. Ren ran his fingers through her hair.

“I failed,” she said. “I wanted to save you and I couldn’t.”

“You couldn’t kill a helpless man even if it would get you what you wanted most. That’s… more than I could.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

Kylo Ren paused. “I get to spend the rest of eternity with the people I admire the most.”

“Yeah,” said Finn quietly. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“See?” said Kylo Ren. “So what are you sorry for?”

Rey’s jerky sobs mirrored Vader’s chugging, labored breaths which echoed through the cabin. When Rey could no longer hear him gasping above her own crying, she quieted to a few low breaths. When she heard him breathe, she breathed until it was so far between she could not hold her breath any longer. And still, he took one more.

As the last and nearest star extinguished, Darth Vader’s last breath left his body. Rey felt it and turned her head.

Anakins, two of them, stood wordlessly over Kylo Ren and Rey. One was the one Rey knew and the other older, but unmistakably the same face. They each smiled.

Moments after eternity reached them.

—

Nobody remembers being conceived, of cells dividing, becoming one thing and not another. Nobody remembers being pulled from one body and becoming a second one. There are many more divisions before that, where a child becomes slowly aware of what they are not, and one day finds a bright point inside of themselves, a firmament in a vast sea of potential, and calls it “I.”

After that, life is division after division, and most of them are vividly recalled.

Rey remembered when she was left by her parents and was divided from the life where she was their child. She remembered each day she said ‘no’ to Unkar Plutt because she would rather die being the girl who told him ‘no’ than live being the one who said ’yes.’

She remembered when Finn came back for her and she was beloved. She remembered when she was not Kylo Ren’s apprentice. When she decided he was his lover. When she decided she would not leave him. When she decided she was not Darth Vader’s murderer.

As the universe collapsed around her, that little island “I” was pulled into the sea of what she had cast off and had not ever been. There was nothing.

And then nothing exploded. Something divided from nothing, the stars pulled from the firmament, the ocean from the islands, and the void receded.

—

Rey fell and landed onto rocks, covered in sweat. Her head ached. She tried to remember how she got there and winced as several mutually exclusive images fought. She had been an empress. Kylo Ren’s fingers in her hair. She had entered the cave to be tested. She had been gone half an hour. She had been gone weeks. There was a version of herself who would never forgive him. There was a version who had, despite herself forgiven him.

From the sea of images and pasts, Rey made a choice and called it “I.”

She lifted her head. She looked around for Luke and spotted him down the shoreline, seated, legs crossed, looking up at Ach-To’s bronze-colored moon. She stood and walked over the rocks, her ankles twisting this way and that on the uneven surface.

“What was that?” she said.

“Killing him won’t bring Han back,” said Luke.

“I know,” she said. To her surprise she meant it.

He stood, unfolding his knees with arthritic difficulty. He brought his face close to hers, examining it. His eyebrows raised. He believed her.

“Then we might have a chance,” he said.

Rey looked behind her, up the cliffside. Luke followed her gaze. Very high up, they saw two tall glowing figures in Jedi robes, side by side, walking down the winding path.

The men smiled at them. They took a right and walked into the flat black mouth of the tainted cave.

There was a flash of light so bright that Rey could still see it through her eyelids. Luke grabbed Rey’s hand and they fled up the mountain path to his cabin. She slept on the floor of it. Through the night the light bounced off the sea, so bright it illuminated the cabin’s ceiling and cast long shadows across its floor.

In the morning, Rey and Luke returned to see what had happened. They wandered inside.

It was just a cave.

Rey returned to her little campsite by the stars. She looked inside her nap sack for her possessions. She wanted to see if she had ever written inside the Book of the Willis. To her surprise, she did not have it.

She did, however, have her diary and her doll. Inside her diary, on the last page, someone had drawn the stars.

—  
Finn showed up two weeks later in an X-wing. Luke toted the teapot and two cups down the stone steps, poured it for them, and then gave them their privacy. Rey and Finn watched the ocean lap the shoreline. They held the little clay cups in their hands and sat on the beach, letting the tea warm their hands.

“What happened?” she said to Finn.

“I don’t know,” said Finn. “My memory is….”

Rey nodded. “Same,” she said.

“What do you remember?”

“I guess what I choose to. I’ve decided I’m not an Empress. I remember less about that than I did a few days ago.”

“I guess same. I’m not a Storm Trooper.”

Rey laughed. “You already knew that.”

Finn made a face at her. “Well, I still had to make the choice again, you know? Might not be as glamorous as an empress, but I do miss parts of it. Being part of a team. Being a part of something bigger.”

Rey looked away. “Sorry.”

Finn nodded.

“Do you think he’ll come?” Finn asked.

“Yes,” she said. “If he remembers where I am, he’ll come.”

“Do you want him to?”

Rey sipped her tea and waited. They slept under the stars, side by side, almost touching.

—

One night, in the middle of the night, Rey opened her eyes to see a First Order ship streaking across the sky like a shooting star, hurtling to where they were.

Finn was also awake. It landed near them on the shoreline. The gangplank lowered. Nobody came out.

Rey stood and walked toward the entrance and Finn followed. She left her doll and her diary and her weapon behind. Wherever she was going, whoever Kylo Ren had decided he was, she knew she would not need them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all.
> 
> I don't get paid. If you liked this consider a donation to Arts in the Armed Forces, Adam Driver's charity.


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